## WALDEN

## Economy

When I wrote the following pages—or rather most of them—I was living alone in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house I built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts. I earned my living solely by the work of my own hands. I lived there for two years and two months. Now, I am once again a resident in civilized society.

I would not intrude so much with my personal affairs before my readers if my townspeople had not made such specific inquiries about how I lived. Some might call their questions impertinent, but I do not find them so; considering the situation, they seem very natural and relevant. Some asked what I ate, whether I felt lonely, if I was afraid, and similar questions. Others wanted to know how much of my income I gave to charity, and some, especially those with large families, were curious about how many poor children I supported. Therefore, I ask those readers who have no particular interest in me to excuse me if I take up some of these questions in this book. In most books, the “I” or first person is omitted; in this one it will remain, and that is the main difference regarding egotism. We usually forget that it is always, after all, the first person speaking. I would not talk so much about myself if there were anyone else I knew as well. Unfortunately, my limited experience keeps me on this topic. Yet, I expect every writer, sooner or later, to give a straightforward and honest account of his own life, and not merely retell what he has heard of other men’s lives—some account like what he would send his family from a faraway place; for if he has lived truly, it will be a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are directed more specifically to poor students. As for my other readers, they will take what parts apply to them. I trust that none will try to force the fit, for the coat may serve well someone to whom it fits.

I would like to say something, not so much about the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders, as about you who read these pages, said to live in New England—about your situation, especially your outward condition in this world, in this town, what it really is, if it must truly be as bad as it is, and whether it could not be improved just as easily as not. I have traveled quite a bit within Concord, and everywhere—in shops, offices, and fields—the people have seemed to me to be doing penance in thousands of curious ways. What I have heard of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and looking straight at the sun, or hanging suspended with their heads downward over flames, or staring backwards so long “that they cannot recover their natural posture, and only liquids can be swallowed,” or living chained for life at the base of a tree, or measuring an empire’s width with their bodies like caterpillars, or standing on one leg on pillars—even these acts of conscious penance seem hardly more unbelievable than the scenes I witness daily. The twelve labors of Hercules were trivial compared to those my neighbors have taken on; for those were only twelve and had an end, but I have never seen these men finish a labor or slay any monster. They have no friend Iolas to burn the hydra’s wound with a hot iron; as soon as one head is crushed, two grow in its place.

I see young men—my fellow townsmen—whose misfortune is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these things are easier to acquire than to be freed from. It would be better if they had been born out in the open pasture and nursed by a wolf, so they could see clearly which field they should actually labor in. Who made them slaves to the land? Why must they consume their sixty acres, when man is destined to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they start digging their graves the day they are born? They must live a man’s life—pushing these burdens before them and managing as well as they can. How many poor immortal souls have I seen nearly crushed and smothered under their load, creeping through life, pushing before them a barn seventy-five feet by forty, their Augean stables never cleaned, and one hundred acres of land—tillage, meadow, pasture, and wood-lot! Those without such burdens to inherit still find it enough labor to manage their own few cubic feet of flesh.

But men labor under a misconception. The better part of themselves is soon plowed into the ground as compost. By what seems to be fate—usually called necessity—they are employed, as it says in an old book, storing away treasures that moth and rust will ruin and thieves will steal. It is a foolish life, as they will realize at the end, if not sooner. 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 quâ simus origine nati.

Or, as Raleigh puts it in his sonorous way,—

“From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,  
Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are.”

So much for blindly obeying a faulty oracle: tossing stones over their shoulders without seeing where they land.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, are, out of ignorance and misunderstanding, so busy with artificial cares and unnecessarily rough labors that they cannot enjoy life’s finer rewards. Their hands, worn from too much hard work, are too clumsy and shaky to handle delicate things. In truth, a laboring man doesn’t have the leisure for real integrity from day to day; he cannot afford to maintain the most honorable relationships with others because his labor would lose value in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can someone recall and confront his own ignorance—which growth requires—when he constantly must make use of what knowledge he has? We ought, at times, to feed and clothe him for free and restore him with encouragement, before judging him. The best qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruit, can only be preserved through the most gentle handling. Yet, we don’t treat ourselves or each other this carefully.

Some of you, as we all know, are poor, find it hard to get by, and at times feel as if you are gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you reading this book aren’t able to pay for all the meals you’ve actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes you are wearing out or have already worn out, and have come to these pages using borrowed or stolen time, taking an hour from your creditors. It’s clear how petty and sneaky the lives many people lead are, for experience has sharpened my vision; always at the limits, always trying to get into business or out of debt, an ancient pit called by the Latins *æs alienum*—another’s money, since some of their coins were brass; living, dying, and being buried for this “other’s brass”; forever promising to pay, promising to pay tomorrow, dying today, insolvent; seeking to win favor or get customers in every possible way except by committing outright crimes; lying, flattering, voting, shrinking into a tight shell of politeness or stretching into empty, showy generosity to persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, his hat, his coat, his carriage, or import his groceries; working yourself sick to save up something for a future sick day, to hide away in an old chest or a stocking or, more safely, in the bank; it does not matter where, or how much, or how little.

Sometimes I am amazed we can be so trivial, almost to the point that we are distracted by the obvious and somewhat distant issue of Negro Slavery, when there are so many subtle and cunning masters enslaving both North and South. It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it’s worse to have a Northern one; but the worst is when you are your own slave-driver. People talk about some godliness in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, driving to market day or night; does any divinity stir in him? His highest duty is to give his horses food and water! What does destiny mean to him compared to his business interests? Doesn’t he work for Squire Make-a-Stir? How godlike, how immortal is he, really? See how he cowers and sneaks, fretting all day—not being immortal or divine, but a slave, a prisoner to his own opinion of himself, his reputation earned by his own actions. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared to our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself—that is what determines, or rather shows, his fate. Self-emancipation, even in far-off lands of the imagination—what Wilberforce will bring that about? And think of the country’s ladies sewing cushions for their dressing tables up until their last days, not wanting to show too much interest in their fate! As if you could kill time without harming eternity.

The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation. What people call resignation is really disguised desperation. From the desperate city you go to the desperate countryside, and end up admiring the courage of minks and muskrats as consolation. Even what are called games and amusements hide a standardized, unconscious despair. There is no play in them, because true play comes only after true work. But wisdom is shown in never doing anything desperate.

When we consider, to borrow from the catechism, what is the chief end of man, and what are the real necessities and means of living, it seems as if men have deliberately chosen the common way to live because they prefer it to any alternative. Yet they honestly believe there’s no other choice. But alert and healthy people remember that the sun rose clear. It’s never too late to abandon our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, no matter how ancient, should be trusted without proof. What everyone repeats or quietly accepts as true today may turn out to be false tomorrow, just the smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a raincloud to water their fields. If older people say you can’t do something, you try and often find that you can. Old actions for the old, and new actions for the new. Old people once didn’t know enough, perhaps, to fetch more fuel for the fire; new people put some dry wood under a pot and travel around the earth so fast it would “kill old people,” as the phrase goes. Age is not better, and hardly as good, an instructor as youth, for it has lost more than it has gained. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute worth from living. In practice, the old have no important advice for the young; their experience is so piecemeal and their lives have been such failures for personal reasons, as they must believe; maybe they have some remaining faith that contradicts their experience, and they’re merely a little less young than before. I have lived about thirty years, and I have yet to hear even the first hint of valuable or earnest advice from my elders. They have told me nothing, and probably can’t tell me anything useful. Here is life, still largely an experiment for me; but their attempts don’t help me. If I have any experience I value, I realize my Mentors never mentioned it.

One farmer tells me, “You can’t live on vegetable food only, because it provides nothing to build bones with;” and so he religiously spends part of every day supplying his body with bone-making material, all while following his oxen, which, with bones made from vegetables, pull him and his heavy plow along, regardless of obstacles. Some things are real necessities in some circles—the most helpless and sick—for others they are just luxuries, and for more, completely unknown.

Some people think the entire territory of human life has been explored by their predecessors—every hill and valley, everything handled. 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, and what share belongs to your neighbor.” Hippocrates even left directions for cutting our nails: even with the fingertips, neither shorter nor longer. Clearly, the boredom and restlessness which claim to have exhausted the joys and variety of life are as old as Adam. But human capacities have never been measured, nor should we judge what someone can do by precedent—so little has actually been tried. Whatever failures you’ve had, “be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?”

We might test our lives by a thousand simple measures; for instance, remembering that the same sun which ripens my beans also shines on a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered that, it would have prevented some mistakes; but that wasn’t the spirit in which I hoed them. The stars are the summits of amazing triangles! What distant and different beings in far-away homes look at the same star at the same instant! Nature and human life are as varied as our different constitutions. Who can say what possibilities life holds for another? Could any greater miracle happen than for us to see through each other’s eyes for a moment? Then we would live through all the ages of the world in an hour—even in all the worlds of all the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no examination of another’s experience as striking or illuminating as this would be.

Most of what my neighbors call good, I deeply believe to be bad, and if I regret anything, it’s likely to be my “good” behavior. What demon possessed me to behave so well? You can say the wisest thing you know, old man—a man of seventy, honored in your way—I still hear another voice, irresistible, calling me away from all of that. Each generation abandons the projects of the one before, like ships stranded on the shore.

I think we could safely trust ourselves—and each other—far more than we do. We might ignore just as much self-care as we honestly put toward others. Nature is as well-suited to our weaknesses as to our strengths. The constant worry and tension some people feel is almost incurable. We are made to exaggerate the importance of our own work; and yet how much is never done by us! Or what if we became ill? How careful we are! Refusing to live by faith unless absolutely necessary; staying alert all day, reluctantly saying our prayers at night, committing ourselves to uncertainty. We are compelled to live so earnestly, honoring our lives and denying any possibility of change. “This is the only way,” we say; but there are as many ways as radii that can be drawn from a center point. Every change is a miracle to behold, but it’s a miracle happening every moment. 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 a person translates a fact from imagination into understanding, eventually all people will ground their lives on that basis.

Let’s consider for a moment the real sources of our troubles and worries and how much worry is truly necessary—if any. There is value in living a primitive or frontier life, even amid outward civilization, simply to learn what are the real necessities of life and how people have acquired them; or even just to look over the old ledgers of merchants, to see what things people most commonly bought—what their basic groceries were. The advancements of ages have made little difference to the basic laws of human existence; our skeletons are probably indistinguishable from those of our ancestors.

By *necessary of life*, I mean whatever, of all the things we earn by our own effort, has, from the beginning or by long habit, become so important to human living that almost no one, whether in savagery, poverty, or philosophy, tries to do without it. For many creatures, in this sense, there is only one necessity: Food. For the bison of the prairie, it’s a few inches of tasty grass and water, unless he seeks shelter in the forest or the mountain’s shadow. None of the animals needs more than Food and Shelter. For people in this climate, the necessities may conveniently be listed as Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; until these are secured, we are not positioned to face life’s true problems freely or successfully. Humans have invented not only houses but clothes and cooked food; and possibly, from the accidental discovery of fire’s warmth, which was first a luxury, arose our current need to sit by a fire. Cats and dogs develop the same habits. With proper Shelter and Clothing, we naturally retain our own body heat; but with too much of these, or too much Fuel—creating more outside heat than our own inside—then, perhaps, cooking starts. Darwin, the naturalist, recorded that while his own well-clothed group sat close to a fire and was still chilly, the naked natives of Tierra del Fuego, farther from the fire, were, incredibly, sweating profusely. Likewise, the native Australian goes naked with no problem while Europeans shiver in their clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardy nature of these “savages” with the intellect of civilized people? According to Liebig, the human body is a stove, and food is the fuel for the burning in our lungs. In the cold we eat more, in the heat we eat less. Animal heat comes from a slow combustion; disease or death comes if it’s too rapid or, for lack of fuel or bad air, the fire goes out. Of course, vital heat isn’t the same as literal fire, but the analogy is sound. It follows from the above that *animal life* is almost the same as *animal heat*; for Food is the fuel that maintains our inner fire, and Fuel only prepares that food or adds warmth from the outside; Shelter and Clothing just serve to keep in the heat thus produced and absorbed.

The main bodily necessity is to keep warm, to retain our vital heat. What efforts we make—not only with Food, Clothing, and Shelter, but even our beds, which are essentially our night clothes, for which we plunder birds’ nests and chests—shelter within shelter, just as the mole makes a grass-lined bed at the end of its tunnel! The poor man complains that the world is cold; and we relate most of our ailments directly to cold, both physical and social. Summer in some climates lets people live a sort of heavenly life. Except to cook food, fuel is unneeded; the Sun is our fire, and many fruits are cooked enough by its rays; generally, food is more varied and accessible; Clothing and Shelter are mostly unnecessary. Today and in this country, as I have found, a few tools—a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc.—and for the intellectually-inclined, lamplight, stationery, and a few books, come right after necessities, yet all can be had at little expense. Yet some, unwisely, travel to far, unhealthy lands for ten or twenty years of toil so that they can return and die in New England “comfortably warmed” at last. The wealthy are not just kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I said, they are cooked, of course *à la mode*.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only unnecessary, but actually hold back the progress of mankind. Regarding luxuries and comforts, the wisest have always lived a simpler, leaner life than the poor. The ancient philosophers—Chinese, Hindu, Persian, and Greek—were a class with fewer outward riches and greater inward wealth than any others. We know little about them. It’s remarkable we know anything at all. The same goes for more recent reformers and benefactors. No one can fairly or wisely observe life except from the high ground of chosen poverty. A life of luxury only produces more luxury, whether in farming, business, literature, or art. Today there are professors of philosophy, but no philosophers. It's respectable to profess because it once was respectable to live that way. To really be a philosopher is not just having deep thoughts or founding a school, but loving wisdom enough to live by it—a life of simplicity, independence, generosity, and trust. It’s solving life’s problems not just in theory, but in practice. The success of most scholars and thinkers is more like that of courtiers than kings—it’s not noble or brave. They get by mostly by conforming, living as their fathers did, and are not pioneers of a nobler humanity. So, why do people keep declining? What causes families to dwindle away? What is the nature of the luxury that weakens and destroys nations? Are we sure such a luxury isn’t present in our own lives? The philosopher is ahead of his age even in outward habits. He isn’t fed, housed, clothed, or kept warm like most. How can anyone call himself a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat except by better means than other men?

Once a man is warmed in the ways I’ve described, what else does he want? Certainly not more of the same—richer food, larger houses, fancier clothing, more and hotter fires, and so on. Once the necessities of life are secured, there’s another alternative besides acquiring superfluities: he can now begin to truly live, his break from mundane toil having started. The soil is right for the seed, as its root goes downward; now the shoot can confidently reach upward. Why else has man grounded himself so firmly, except to rise in equal measure toward the heavens?—for the nobler plants are prized for the fruits they bear high up, in air and light, far from earth, unlike the humbler vegetables, which, although sometimes biennials, are grown mostly until their roots are developed, their tops cut down so much that most wouldn’t recognize them in bloom.

I’m not trying to set rules for the strong and daring, who will manage their own affairs in heaven or hell, possibly build more splendid things and spend more freely than the richest, without ever becoming poor, never knowing how they manage it—if such people even exist, as has been imagined; nor am I speaking to those who find hope and inspiration in the present state of things, and love it passionately—among whom I partly count myself; nor to those who know they’re well employed, in whatever situation—those people know whether their use of time is good or not. I mainly address the great group of men who are discontent and lazily complain about the hardship of their lives or the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain the most energetically and hopelessly of all, because they are, as they say, “doing their duty.” I’m also thinking of that apparently wealthy, but actually most impoverished class, who have stored up riches, but don’t know how to use or shed them, and so have made for themselves golden or silver chains.

If I were to describe how I’ve wished to spend my life over the years, it would probably surprise readers who know anything about my actual history, and certainly astonish those who know nothing of it. I will just hint at some of the projects I have pursued.

In any weather, at any time day or night, I have wanted to make the most of the moment and literally mark it down; to stand at the intersection of two eternities—the past and future—which is the present; to meet that moment. You’ll forgive some vagueness, as my trade contains more secrets than most, not kept on purpose, but inherent in its nature. I’d gladly share everything I know about it and never hang a “No Admittance” sign on my door.

Long ago I lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove and I am still following their trail. I have talked to many travelers about them, describing their tracks and what calls they responded to. I’ve met one or two who had heard the hound, the hoofbeats of the horse, even seen the dove vanish behind a cloud, and they seemed as eager to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.

To anticipate, not just the sunrise and dawn, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before any neighbor was out about his business, have I been out about mine! Surely many townsfolk have seen me returning from such activities, farmers leaving for Boston in the twilight, or woodcutters starting work. True, I never helped the sun rise in any real way, but nonetheless there was nothing more important than simply being there to witness it.

So many autumn—and even winter—days I spent outside the town, trying to catch whatever was in the wind, to listen and pass it along! I nearly spent all my resources on this, and lost my own breath running into the wind. If either political party had cared about it, you can be sure it would have been in the Gazette as quickly as possible. At other times, I watched from the height of a cliff or up in a tree, eager to signal any new arrival, or waited at dusk on the hilltops for something to descend from the sky—though, like manna, what little I did catch would soon disappear again in the sunlight.

For a long time, I served as a reporter for a small-circulation journal whose editor never chose to print most of my contributions. Like many writers, my only reward was my effort. Yet in this case, my efforts were their own reward.

For many years, I acted as the self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, faithfully doing my duty; a surveyor—not of highways, but of forest paths and cross-lot routes—keeping them clear and bridges passable in every season, wherever the community’s use showed their value.

I also kept an eye on the town's wild stock, which gives a good herdsman plenty of trouble by jumping fences; and I looked after the farm’s hidden corners, even if I didn’t always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked a particular field that day. That was not my concern. I watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry, the nettle tree, the red pine and black ash, the white grape and yellow violet—plants that might have otherwise withered during dry spells.

In short, I spent a long time, and I may say this without boasting, faithfully attending to my business, until it became increasingly clear that my townsmen would not ultimately include me among the list of town officers, nor make my position a sinecure with reasonable compensation. My accounts—which I can honestly swear I have kept diligently—have never been audited, let alone accepted, paid, or settled. That’s not something I set my heart on.

Not long ago, a wandering Indian tried to sell baskets at a well-known lawyer’s house in my neighborhood. “Would you like to buy some baskets?” he asked. “No, we do not want any,” came the reply. “What!” cried the Indian as he left, “do you mean to starve us?” He had seen his hardworking white neighbors prosper—that the lawyer had only to weave arguments and somehow, instantly gained wealth and status—so he told himself: I will start a business; I will weave baskets; this is something I can do. He thought once he made the baskets, he had done his part, and then it would be the white man’s responsibility to buy them. He had yet to learn that he needed to make it worthwhile for others to buy, or at least convince them as much, or else make something else they valued more. I too had woven a sort of delicate basket, but I hadn’t made it worth anyone’s while to purchase them. Still, I found it worth my time to weave them, and rather than learning how to sell them, I focused on how to avoid needing to sell at all. The life men praise and consider successful is just one kind. Why should we exaggerate any single kind of life at the expense of others?

Realizing my fellow citizens were unlikely to offer me any room in the courthouse, or a curacy or living anywhere else, and that I must rely on myself, I turned to the woods more completely, where I was better known. I resolved to go into business immediately, rather than wait to collect the usual capital, using whatever modest means I already had. My goal in going to Walden Pond was not to live either cheaply or expensively, but to take care of personal business with the fewest possible obstacles; failing to accomplish this for lack of a little common sense, enterprise, and business ability seemed not just sad, but foolish.

I have always tried to develop strict business habits; they are necessary for everyone. If your trade is with distant lands—say, the Celestial Empire—then even a simple office in some Salem harbor will be enough. You’ll export what the country supplies—mainly native products: lots of ice and pine timber, a bit of granite, always in local ships. These are good ventures. Oversee all the details yourself: be the pilot, captain, owner, and underwriter; buy, sell, keep the books; read every letter you receive and write or read every letter you send; oversee the loading and unloading day and night; be in many places along the coast at once—often the most valuable cargo lands on a Jersey shore; serve as your own telegraph, constantly scanning the horizon, talking to every passing coastal ship; keep a steady flow to supply such a distant, demanding market; follow the markets, learn the prospects for war or peace everywhere, and predict trends in trade and civilization—making use of new discoveries and navigation improvements; study charts, check the positions of reefs, new lights, buoys, and continually correct the logarithmic tables, since one miscalculation can wreck a ship that should have made a safe landing—that’s the untold fate of La Perouse; keep up with science, study the stories of great explorers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians to today; and periodically take stock to know where you stand. All of this tests a person’s abilities—these questions of profit and loss, interest, tare and tret, and all kinds of gauging demand wide, general knowledge.

I have wondered if Walden Pond would be a good business spot, not just because of the railroad and ice trade; it offers advantages perhaps best not revealed in detail. It’s a sound harbor and sturdy ground. There are no Neva marshes to fill, though wherever you build you must drive your own piles. A flood tide, with a westerly wind and ice in the Neva, is said to be able to sweep away St. Petersburg.

Entering this business without the usual capital, it’s not easy to imagine where one might find even the essential means. As for Clothing—to get straight to the practical point—perhaps we are guided more by novelty and concern for others' opinions in buying it than by real utility. Whoever has work to do should remember that clothing’s main purpose is, first, to preserve bodily warmth, and, second, in our culture, to cover nakedness. He can judge for himself how much important work he can perform before needing to buy more clothes. Kings and queens who wear a suit once—though made by special tailors to their majesties—never know the comfort of a suit that actually fits. They are no better than wooden horses used for hanging clothes. Every day our garments conform more to us, picking up something of our character, until we hesitate to lay them aside, except after much preparation, like our very bodies. No man’s standing is ever lowered in my eyes by a patch on his clothes; yet there is, generally, greater concern for wearing fashionable or at least clean, unpatched clothes than for keeping a clear conscience. Even if a tear isn’t fixed, the worst it shows is maybe carelessness. I sometimes test my acquaintances: who could wear a patch, or an extra seam or two at the knee? Most act as if wearing patched clothes would ruin all their prospects. They’d rather hobble to town on a broken leg than in torn pants. If a man’s leg is hurt, it can be fixed, but if his pant leg is torn, nothing can be done; for he thinks not of what is respectable in truth, but of what is respected by others. We know a few men, but many more coats and trousers. Dress a scarecrow in your last clean shirt—while you stand beside it undressed—and who wouldn’t greet the scarecrow first? Passing a cornfield the other day, seeing a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the farmer—they only looked a bit more weathered than before. I’ve heard of a dog that barked at anyone coming onto its master’s property in clothes, but ignored a naked thief. It’s interesting to wonder how social rank would stand if everyone stripped off their clothes. Could you, in that case, pick out the most respected class among any group of civilized men? When Madame Pfeiffer traveled the world and arrived as far west as Asiatic Russia, she felt it necessary to wear something more formal to meet officials, since, as she wrote, she was now in a civilized land “where people are judged by their clothes.” Even in democratic New England towns, wealth—and its display in dress and gear—almost automatically brings respect. Those who give that respect, as many as there are, are still heathens in this regard, and perhaps need a missionary. Besides, clothing has introduced endless sewing—at least for women, a dress is never finished.

A person who finally finds true work does not need a new outfit to do it; for him, the old clothes, grown dusty in the attic for who knows how long, will serve. Old shoes last a hero longer than they served the hero’s valet (if heroes have valets)—bare feet are older than shoes, and will suffice. Only those going to parties and legislatures need new coats, changing as often as the man changes within. But if my jacket, pants, hat, and shoes are good enough to worship God in, surely they’ll do for anything, right? Who has ever seen his own clothes—his old coat—actually worn to rags, thoroughly used, so that it isn’t an act of charity to pass it to a poor boy, who might pass it to someone still poorer—or shall we say, richer, because he can manage with less? I say, beware of any venture that needs new clothes instead of a new wearer. If the wearer is not renewed, how can the new clothes fit? If you are planning any undertaking, try it in your old clothes. People want not so much something to *do with* as something to *do*, or better, something to *be*. Maybe we should never buy a new suit, however worn or dirty the old one, until we’ve lived, ventured, or traveled in such a way that we feel renewed in the old, and to keep it would be like putting new wine in old bottles. Like birds in their molting season, we must experience a life crisis; the loon withdraws to a quiet pond for this. The snake sheds its skin, the caterpillar its wormy coat, all through inward work and growth; for clothes are just our outer skin, our mortal shell. If not, we end up sailing under false colors, inevitably disgraced by our own judgment, as well as by others.

We put on layer after layer, as if we grew like trees—adding externally. Our outer, often thin and stylish clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, lifeless and removable without injury; our thicker, daily-worn garments are our true bark or cortex; but our shirts are our liber or living bark, which can't be removed without wounding or destroying us. I believe every culture has its version of a shirt. It’s best if a man dresses so simply he can find himself in the dark, and lives so compactly and prepared that, if enemies take the town, he can leave without worry—empty-handed, as the old philosophers did. While one thick garment generally suffices as well as three thin ones, and clothing can be had cheaply—a five-dollar coat lasting five years, two-dollar pants, boots for a dollar and a half, summer hats for a quarter, winter caps for sixty-two and a half cents, or homemade for less—who, dressed in his own hard-earned clothes, would lack wise men to respect him?

When I ask my tailor for a garment of a certain design, she tells me, “They don’t make them that way now,” as if citing impersonal authority, unable to believe what I ask. When I hear this cryptic statement, I dwell on each word, trying to figure out who “they” are, what link they have to me, and what right they have to rule my clothing. Finally, I feel like replying just as cryptically, “It’s true, they didn’t make them that way before, but they do now.” Of what use is measuring me if she does not measure my character, but just the width of my shoulders, as if I am just a peg for her coat? We worship not the Graces, nor the Fates, but Fashion. Fashion spins, weaves, and cuts with full command. The head monkey in Paris puts on a certain hat, and all the monkeys in America copy him. Sometimes I lose hope of getting anything simple and honest accomplished with help from men. They would first need to be put through a press to squeeze out their old ideas, and then, likely, one in the company would have a strange notion in his head—hatched out of an egg that no fire can destroy—so all labor would be wasted. Yet, we mustn’t forget, some Egyptian wheat was preserved to us by a mummy.

All things considered, it can’t be said that dressing has become, in any country, a real art. People make do with whatever clothing they can find. Like shipwrecked sailors, they grab what the shore provides, and from some distance—in time or space—laugh heartily at one another's outfits. Each generation mocks the old fashions, but follows the new ones with devotion. The costumes of Henry VIII or Queen Elizabeth amuse us as much as those of cannibal island royalty. All clothing, off its wearer, is either pitiful or ridiculous. Only the serious eyes and sincere lives within can lend dignity to a nation’s dress. Let Harlequin be taken ill, and his outfit must serve for that mood as well. When a soldier falls to a cannon ball, rags are as suitable as royal robes.

Men’s and women’s childish or wild craving for new patterns keeps many eyes glued to kaleidoscopes, hunting for the design this generation suddenly needs. Manufacturers see that these tastes are just whims. Two patterns—differing by just a few colored threads—one sells quickly, the other sits unsold, though often the “wrong” one becomes the next season’s favorite. In comparison, tattooing is not as awful as it’s said to be. It's not barbaric just because the mark is permanent and skin-deep.

I can’t believe our factory system is the best way to get people dressed. The condition of the workers is becoming more like the English every day; and it’s not surprising, as, from everything I’ve seen, the main purpose is not to clothing people well and honestly, but, without question, to make corporations wealthy. In the end, people only achieve what they intend. Failing at first is fine, as long as they shoot for something high.

Now, regarding Shelter, I won’t deny that it’s a modern necessity, though there are people who have done without it for long periods in colder climates than this. Samuel Laing notes that “the Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow—in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in any woollen clothing.” He saw them asleep as such. Yet, he adds, “They are not hardier than other people.” Still, humans likely didn’t long endure the earth without realizing the comfort of a house—the comforts of home perhaps originally meant the satisfaction of the house itself more than the family—though this comfort is partial and only truly felt in climates where the house is associated with winter or rain, and for most of the year, save for a parasol, it isn’t needed. In our climate, in summer, shelter used to be mainly for nighttime. In Indian symbols, a wigwam meant a day’s march, and a row marked the number of camps. Man, not being so tough or massive, must seek to shrink his world, walling in a space suited for himself. He once lived exposed outdoors; while this might be nice in fair weather by day, the rainy season, winter, and scorching sun would have ended us if we didn’t hasten to cover ourselves with shelter. Adam and Eve, so the legend goes, wore a bower before clothes. Man needed a home—physical warmth first, then the warmth of affection.

Imagine the dawn of the human race, some enterprising soul hiding in a rock hollow for shelter. Every child is, to some degree, starting the world anew, and loves to stay outside even when it's cold and wet. Children play house as instinctively as horse. Who doesn’t recall looking as a child at rocks, caves, or any sign of a dwelling with interest? That’s the primitive ancestor lingering in us. From the cave, we've gone on to roofs of palm leaves, to bark and boughs, to woven linen, grass, straw, boards, shingles, stones, and tiles. Now, life in the open air is forgotten, and our lives far more domestic than we realize. The gap, in spirit, from hearth to field is a wide one. We'd do well to spend more days and nights with nothing between ourselves and the stars; maybe the poet and the saint stay too long under a roof. Birds don’t sing in caves, nor do doves keep their innocence in dovecotes.

Still, if you aim to build a house, it pays to use some Yankee cleverness, so that you don't end up in a workhouse, a maze, museum, almshouse, prison, or ornate tomb instead. Consider first just how little shelter is truly needed. I’ve seen Penobscot Indians in this town living in cotton tents with nearly a foot of snow around and thought they’d like the snow deeper to stop the wind. Years ago, when I worried more about making an honest living with time left for true interests, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet by three, where laborers locked up their tools at night, and thought that anyone struggling could buy such a box for a dollar, bore a few holes in it for air, and sleep inside during rain or night, closing the lid, free in love and soul. This did not seem a bad or undignified option. You could keep whatever hours you pleased, go out whenever you wanted—no landlord demanding rent. Many suffer endlessly to pay rent on a larger, fancier box, when they wouldn’t have frozen in one such as this. I do not joke. Economy can be addressed lightly, but cannot be dismissed so easily. Early sturdy houses here were made from whatever materials Nature provided, by people who lived mostly outdoors. Gookin, the superintendent of the Indians under the Massachusetts Colony, wrote in 1674: “The best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green…. The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former…. Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad…. I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses.” He also notes that they were carpeted and lined inside with embroidered mats, and fitted with utensils. The Indians even managed the effect of wind by hanging a mat over the roof hole, moved by a string. Such a lodge could be built in a day or two at most, and dismantled within hours; each family owned one or their section of one.

In the so-called savage state, every family has a shelter as good as the best, plenty for their simple needs; but I am confident in saying that, though birds have nests and foxes holes and the “savages” have wigwams, among so-called civilized people fewer than half the families own their shelter. In big cities, where civilization is supposed to be greatest, the fraction owning a shelter is much smaller. The rest pay a yearly tax for this essential outside garment—needed in winter or summer—that could buy a village of wigwams, yet keeps them poor all their lives. I won’t focus here on the downsides of renting versus owning, but it’s clear that the native owns his shelter because it's cheap, while the civilized man rents, usually because he can’t afford to own; and won’t, in the end, be able to rent forever either. Suppose one says that by paying this rent, the poor “civilized” man gets a home that’s a palace compared to the “savage’s.” An annual rent of twenty-five to a hundred dollars (country rates) gives him the benefit of centuries’ advancements—spacious rooms, clean paint and wallpaper, modern fireplaces, plaster, blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a roomy cellar, and more. But why is it that the one who enjoys all these things is usually described as poor, while the “savage,” who has none, is rich as a savage? If civilization is truly an advance—and I believe it is, at least for the wise—then it must be proven that it has provided better homes without making them costlier. The price of a thing is how much life must be exchanged for it, whether immediately or eventually. An average house in this area costs around eight hundred dollars, and, even without a family, it takes a laborer ten to fifteen years to save that, estimating labor’s value at one dollar a day. So, most spend over half their life’s work to get their “wigwam.” If he rents instead, it’s just another evil. Would the so-called savage be wise to trade his wigwam for a palace, under these terms?

It may be guessed that I reduce nearly all the benefit of possessing this extra property, as a reserve for the future, largely to covering funeral expenses as far as the individual is concerned. But maybe a man is not required to bury himself. Still, this highlights an important difference between the civilized person and the savage; and, without doubt, they have plans for our supposed benefit, making the life of a civilized people into an *institution,* in which the life of the individual is largely absorbed, to preserve and improve that of the race. But I wish to show at what great cost this benefit is currently obtained, and to suggest that we might possibly live in a way that secures all the advantage without suffering the disadvantages. What do you mean when you say the poor will always be with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?

“As I live, says the Lord God, you shall no longer have cause 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 sins, it shall die.”

When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as other groups, I find that for the most part, they have worked twenty, thirty, or forty years, to become the real owners of their farms, which they usually inherit with debts, or else buy with borrowed money—and it’s fair to say a third of that labor is the cost of their houses—yet usually they have not paid for them. Sometimes, the debts outweigh the value of the farm, making the farm itself a burden, yet someone still inherits it, being familiar with it, as he says. When I asked the assessors, I was surprised to find they couldn’t name even a dozen in town who own their farms free and clear. If you want to know the history of these homesteads, ask at the bank where they’re mortgaged. The man who has truly paid for his farm with his own labor is so rare that every neighbor can point him out. I doubt there are three such men in Concord. What’s said of merchants—that a very large majority, even ninety-seven out of a hundred, are sure to fail—is just as true of farmers. Regarding merchants, though, one of them aptly says most failures aren't real financial failures, but merely failures to fulfill agreements, because it’s inconvenient—meaning it’s their moral character that collapses. But this makes the matter even worse, and suggests also that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perhaps bankrupt in a worse way than those who honestly fail. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the platforms from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersaults, but the savage stands on the inflexible plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show happens here every year with *éclat*, as if all the parts of the agricultural machine were running smoothly.

The farmer is trying to solve the problem of making a living with a formula more complex than the problem itself. To get his shoelaces he bets on herds of cattle. With great skill he has set his trap, with a hair-trigger, to capture comfort and independence, and then, turning away, has trapped himself. That is why he is poor; and for a similar reason, we are all poor in respect to a thousand primitive comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman sings,—

“The false society of men—  
        —for earthly greatness  
All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.”

And after the farmer has secured his house, he may not be richer, but rather poorer for it, the house having captured him instead. As I understand it, that was a valid objection made by Momus against the house Minerva built, that she “had not made it movable, so that a bad neighborhood could be avoided;” and the objection still stands, for our houses are such unwieldy property that they often imprison rather than shelter us; and the bad neighborhood to avoid is our own disagreeable selves. I know at least one or two families in this town who, for nearly a generation, have wished to sell their houses on the outskirts and move into the village, but have been unable to do it, and only death will set them free.

Suppose the *majority* are eventually able to either own or rent the modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has improved our houses, it has not equally improved the people who live in them. It has created palaces, but creating noblemen and kings was not so easy. And *if the pursuits of civilized people are no more worthy than those of the savage, if he spends most of his life getting only basic necessities and comforts, why should he have a better dwelling than the latter?*

But how does the poor minority live? Perhaps it turns out that just as some have been raised above the savage in outward circumstances, others have been lowered below him. The luxury of one class is offset by the poverty of another. On one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and the “silent poor.” The thousands who built the pyramids as tombs for the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and perhaps were not even decently buried themselves. The mason who finishes the palace cornice may return each night to a hut not even as good as a wigwam. It's a mistake to assume that, in a country with all the signs of civilization, a large portion of the people might not be living as poorly as savages. I am talking about the degraded poor, not at the moment the degraded rich. To know this, I need not look beyond the shanties that line our railroads everywhere, that latest innovation of civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living like animals, with an open door all winter for light, without any visible or even imaginable woodpile, and their bodies—young and old—permanently bent from years of shrinking from cold and misery, with all their limbs and faculties stunted. It certainly is fair to take a look at that class, by whose labor the great accomplishments of this generation are made. Such, to some degree, is also the state of all kinds of workers in England, the world’s great workhouse. Or I could refer you to Ireland, considered one of the world's “enlightened spots.” Compare the physical condition of the Irish with the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other native race before it was degraded through contact with the civilized man. Yet I don’t doubt those rulers are as wise as most civilized leaders. Their condition only proves how much squalor can exist side by side with civilization. I barely need to mention laborers in our Southern States, who produce the country’s main exports and are themselves a staple product of the South. But let me focus on those who are said to be in *moderate* circumstances.

Most men apparently never consider what a house is, and end up unnecessarily poor all their lives because they think they must have a house like their neighbors. That’s like wearing whatever kind of coat the tailor cuts out for him, or gradually giving up a palm-leaf hat or woodchuck-skin cap, complaining of “hard times” because he can't buy himself a crown! It’s possible to invent a house even more comfortable and luxurious than ours—one everyone would agree no one could really afford. Should we always strive to acquire more and more of these things, and never be content with less? Should the respectable citizen thus teach, both by word and example, that it’s necessary for a young man to provide himself with numerous fancy shoes, umbrellas, and empty guest rooms for empty guests, before he dies? Why shouldn’t our furniture be as simple as the Arab’s or the Indian’s? When I think about the benefactors of humanity—those we honor as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts—I don’t picture any entourage behind them, or any train of fashionable furniture. Or what if I allowed—wouldn’t it be a strange concession?—that our furniture should be more elaborate than the Arab’s, only insofar as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! Right now, our houses are cluttered and stained with it, and a good housewife would sweep most of it out and not leave her morning’s work unfinished. Morning work! By the blush of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should man’s real *morning work* be in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but was alarmed that they needed dusting daily, when the furniture of my own mind was undusted, so I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I’d rather sit outdoors, for no dust gathers on the grass, except where man has disturbed it.

It is the extravagant and dissipated who set the fashions that the masses eagerly follow. The traveler who stays in the finest homes, so-called, quickly finds this out, for the hosts assume he is a Sardanapalus, and if he gives in to their ways, he’ll soon be entirely unmanly. In the railroad car, I think, we’re more likely to spend on luxury than on safety and convenience, and the car, though not any better, threatens to become just like a modern drawing room, with its divans, ottomans, sun-shades, and other eastern inventions, made for the ladies of the harem and the delicate natives of the Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed even to know about. I’d rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded onto a velvet cushion. I’d rather ride in an ox cart on the earth, breathing freely, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and inhale *malaria* all the way.

The simplicity and bareness of humans' lives in primitive times had at least this advantage: they remained only temporary guests in nature. Once refreshed with food and sleep, they set out on their journey again. They lived, in a sense, in a tent in this world, always moving through valleys, across plains, or up mountains. But now, men have become the tools of their tools. The man who once picked fruit when hungry is now a farmer; he who once took shelter under a tree is now a housekeeper. We don’t camp for a night anymore, but have settled on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity just as an improved method of *agri*-culture. We’ve built for this world a family mansion, and for the next, a family tomb. The best art expresses man’s struggle to free himself from this state, but our art usually just makes this low condition comfortable and causes us to forget the higher one. In fact, there is no place in this village, if any fine art survived to this day, fit for it to stand, for our lives, houses, and streets provide no suitable pedestal. There’s not even a nail to hang a picture on or a shelf to hold the bust of a hero or saint. When I consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and how they’re managed inside, I wonder the flooring doesn’t fall through under the visitor while he’s admiring the trinkets on the mantelpiece, dropping him into the cellar, to something solid and honest, though earthy. I can’t help feeling this so-called rich and refined life is reached by a leap, and I can’t enjoy the *fine* arts that decorate it, because my mind is busy with the leap itself; for I remember the greatest leap made by human muscle alone, on record, is that of certain wandering Arabs, said to have jumped twenty-five feet on level ground. Without artificial supports, man is sure to land back on earth after such a distance. The first question I’m tempted to put to the owner of such a grand pretense is, Who props you up? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail, or one of the three that succeed? Answer me that, and maybe I’ll look at your trinkets and find them attractive. The cart before the horse is neither pretty nor useful. Before we can decorate our houses with beautiful objects, the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped too, and beautiful housekeeping and living need to be laid as the foundation: it’s outdoors, where there’s no house and no housekeeper, that the taste for beauty is most developed.

Old Johnson, in his “Wonder-Working Providence,” talking about the first settlers of this town, whom he knew, says “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 didn’t “provide themselves houses,” he says, “till the earth, by the Lord’s blessing, brought forth bread to feed them,” and the first year’s crop was so poor 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 those who wanted land there, states more specifically that “those in New Netherland, and especially New England, who cannot afford to build farmhouses at first as they wish, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar-fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they want, line the earth inside with wood around the wall, and line the wood with bark or something else to prevent the earth from caving in; they floor the cellar with planks and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, then make a roof of spars reaching up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses, with their whole families, for two, three, or four years—apart from the fact that partitions are put up in the cellars as needed for the family's size. The wealthy and leading men in New England, at the start of the colonies, built such first houses for two reasons; first, to avoid wasting time building and to avoid lacking food the next season; second, not to discourage poor laborers they brought from the Fatherland. After three or four years, when the country could support farming, they built handsome homes, spending several thousands on them.”

There was at least some prudence in this course our ancestors took, as if their rule was to satisfy the most urgent needs first. But are the most pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of obtaining for myself one of our luxurious houses, I’m deterred; for, so to speak, the country is not yet suitable for *human* culture, and we still have to cut our *spiritual* bread much thinner than our forefathers did their wheat. Not that all architectural decoration should be neglected in the coarsest times; but let’s have our houses first lined with beauty, where they touch our lives, like the home of the shellfish, and not just decorated on the outside. But, alas! I’ve been inside one or two, and know what they are really lined with.

Though we are not so degenerate that we couldn't possibly live in a cave or wigwam, or wear animal skins today, it certainly is better to accept the advantages—though so dearly bought—which human invention and industry offer. In a neighborhood like this, boards, shingles, lime, and bricks are cheaper and easier to come by than proper caves, or full logs, or bark in big enough quantities, or even good clay or flat stones. I speak knowingly, for I’ve learned about this both in theory and practice. With a little more ingenuity, we might use these resources so as to become richer than anyone now, and make our civilization a real blessing. The civilized person is a wiser, more experienced savage. But I must get to my own experiment.

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, closest to where I wanted to build my house, and started to cut down some tall, slender white pines, still young, for timber. It’s hard to start without borrowing, but maybe it’s generous to let your fellow-men have a stake in your project. The axe’s owner, as he let go, told me it was the apple of his eye; but I gave it back sharper than I got it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, with views out onto the pond, and a small field in the forest where pines and hickories were growing. The pond's ice hadn't yet melted, though some areas were open, and it was dark and saturated with water. There were a few snow flurries during my work, but mostly, when I came out by the railroad on my way home, its yellow sand heap gleamed in the hazy spring air, the rails shone in the sun, and I heard the lark, pewee, and other returning birds beginning another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man’s discontent was thawing, along with the earth, and torpid life was stirring. One day, when my axe came off and I cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and left all to soak in a pond to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake glide into the water and rest on the bottom, seemingly unfazed, for over fifteen minutes; maybe, like men, he hadn’t quite woken from winter’s torpor. I’d seen snakes on frosty mornings, still partly numb in my pathway, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On April 1st it rained and melted the ice, and that foggy morning I heard a stray goose groping over the pond, cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the mist.

So I continued for a few days cutting and shaping timber, and also sticks and rafters, all with my small axe, not having many shareable or scholarly 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 shaped the main timbers to six-inch squares, most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, making them just as straight and even stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by its base, since I had borrowed more tools by this time. My days in the woods weren’t very long; still, I usually brought my lunch of bread and butter and read the newspaper it was wrapped in at noon, sitting among the green pine boughs I had cut off. Even my bread picked up some of their scent, as my hands were sticky with pitch. By the end, I felt more like a friend than an enemy to the pine tree, though I had cut some down, having become better acquainted with them. Sometimes, someone wandering in the woods was drawn by the sound of my axe, and we had pleasant conversations over the chips I had made.

By the middle of April—since I didn’t rush but made the most of my work—my house was framed and ready for raising. I had already bought the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James Collins’s shanty was considered unusually nice. When I went to see it, he wasn’t home. I walked around the outside, at first unnoticed from within because the window was so deep and high. It was small, with a peaked cottage roof and not much else visible; the dirt was piled five feet high all around as if it were a compost heap. The roof was the soundest part, though it was warped and made brittle by the sun. There was no door-sill, but hens had a permanent path under the door board. Mrs. C. came to the door and invited me to look inside. The hens scurried in at my approach. It was dark, with a mostly dirt floor—damp, clammy, and chilly—with just a few scattered boards, none fit for removal. She lit a lamp to show me the inside roof and walls, and pointed out that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the cellar, a sort of two-foot-deep dust hole. As she put it, there were “good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good window”—originally two full panes, though the cat had recently gone out that way. There was a stove, a bed, a place to sit, a baby born in the house, a silk parasol, a gilt-framed mirror, and a brand-new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling, all told. The deal was quickly struck—James having come home meanwhile—I was to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents that night, he was to move out by five the next morning, selling to no one else in the meantime; I would take possession at six. He said it was wise to arrive early, to avoid any vague but entirely unjust claims concerning ground rent or fuel. He assured me this was the only concern. At six, I passed him and his family on the road. One large bundle held everything they owned—bed, coffee mill, mirror, hens—all except the cat, which escaped to the woods and became a wild cat, and as I later learned, stepped in a trap set for woodchucks and became a dead cat at last.

I dismantled this dwelling the same morning, pulling out the nails, and moved it to the pond by small cartloads, laying the boards on the grass so the sun could bleach and flatten them again. An early thrush greeted me with a few notes as I drove along the woodland path. I was slyly informed by young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, another Irishman, was pocketing the still-useful, straight, and reusable nails, staples, and spikes during the trips, and then, when I returned, lingered innocently by, looking up with spring thoughts, and chatting about the ruin—there being a shortage of work, as he said. He was there as an onlooker, making this small event seem as significant as the removal of the gods from Troy.

I dug my cellar into the south slope of a hill where a woodchuck had previously made his burrow, cutting through sumac and blackberry roots, and the deepest roots, six feet square by seven deep, into clean sand where potatoes would never freeze, no matter the winter. The sides were left sloped, not stoned; but since the sun had never shone on them, the sand remains in place. It was only a couple of hours’ work. I especially enjoyed this breaking of ground, since in nearly all countries men dig into earth for an even temperature. Even beneath the most splendid city house is still the cellar, where roots are kept just as in old times, and long after the main building is gone, future generations notice its mark on the ground. The house is still just a kind of porch at the entrance to a burrow.

At last, early in May, with help from some acquaintances—more to enjoy such neighborly moments than necessity—I put up the frame of my house. No one was ever more honored by his helpers than I; I hope they will one day help with even greater endeavors. I began living in my house on July 4th, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, since the boards were feather-edged and lapped so tightly that rain couldn’t get in; but before boarding, I had laid the chimney foundation at one end, carrying two cartloads of stones up from the pond in my arms. I built the chimney after I finished hoeing in the fall, before a fire was needed for warmth, and meanwhile did all my cooking outside on the ground, early in the morning. In some ways, I still think this method is more convenient and enjoyable than usual. When storms came before my bread was baked, I set up a few boards over the fire, sat under them to watch my loaf, and spent some pleasant hours that way. In those days, when my hands were busy, I read little, but even the smallest scraps of paper on the ground, my holder, or the tablecloth, kept me as entertained and served the same purpose as the Iliad.

It would be worthwhile to build even more thoughtfully than I did—considering, for instance, what need there is for a door, window, cellar, or attic in human nature, and perhaps never adding anything extra until we find a better reason than just our temporary needs. There’s something as natural about a man building his own house as a bird building its nest. Who knows—if men built their dwellings with their own hands and provided simply and honestly for themselves and their families, maybe their poetic side would flourish, as birds always sing while building? But alas! we act more like cowbirds or cuckoos, laying our eggs in other birds’ nests and offering no cheerful song to travelers. Shall we forever leave the pleasure of building to carpenters? What experience does architecture give to most people? I’ve never, on all my walks, met anyone building his own house in so simple and natural a way. We are all part of the division of labor. It isn’t just the tailor who’s the “ninth part of a man”—so is the preacher, merchant, and farmer. Where will this division end, and what is its purpose? No doubt another *can* do my thinking for me; but that doesn’t mean he *should* do so to the point that I never think for myself.

True, there are so-called architects in this country, and I’ve heard of at least one inspired to make architectural ornaments have a core of truth—a necessity and thus a beauty—as if this were a revelation to him. That’s all well and good from his view, but only a little better than the usual dilettante. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he started at the cornice, not the foundation. He was interested only in giving a core of truth to the ornaments, so that every sugar plum would have an almond or caraway seed inside—though in my opinion, almonds are better without sugar—and not in how the resident, the house’s true dweller, might build honestly inside and out, letting ornaments take care of themselves. What reasonable person ever supposed ornaments were merely superficial—that tortoises got their shells’ spots, or shellfish their mother-of-pearl, by the same kind of contract as people on Broadway did their Trinity Church? But a man has as little to do with the style of his house’s architecture as a tortoise does with its shell—and a soldier shouldn’t waste time trying to paint his exact virtues on his standard; the enemy will know in the end. He’ll turn pale when tested. This man seemed to peer over the cornice, timidly whispering his half-truth to the rough residents who knew it better already. Whatever architectural beauty I see now, I know has grown from the inside out, born of the needs and character of the builder, who is the only true creator—out of some unconscious honesty and dignity, without any thought for looks. Any additional beauty of this kind must spring from a similarly unconscious beauty of life. The most interesting homes in this country, as painters see, are usually the humblest log huts and cottages of the poor; it’s the lives of the inhabitants, whose shells these homes are, and not just their appearance, that make them *picturesque*; and such will be true even of city homes, when the inhabitants’ lives are just as simple and appealing, and there is no striving for mere effect. Most architectural ornaments are literally hollow; a September wind would blow them off like borrowed feathers, yet do no harm to what’s underneath. Those who have no olives or wine in their cellars have no need for *architecture.* What if as much fuss were made over literary style, and those who created our Bibles spent as much time on the “cornices” of their prose as architects do on their churches? That’s how we get the *belles-lettres* and *beaux-arts* and all their professors. Does it really matter how a few sticks are placed above or below a man, or what colors are painted on his box? It would matter, I suppose, if *he* built it and chose the colors himself—but if he has lost his spirit, it’s no different from building his own coffin—the architecture of the grave. “Carpenter” is just another word for “coffin-maker.” Someone, in despair or indifference to life, says, take up some dirt and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of his “last and narrow house”? May as well toss a coin for it. How much leisure must he have! Why pick up a handful of earth? Better to paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush with you. A project to improve the look of cottage architecture! When you have my ornaments ready, I’ll wear them.

Before winter I built a chimney and shingled the sides of my house, which were already rainproof, with imperfect and sappy shingles made from the first slices of the log, whose edges I had to straighten with a plane.

So I have a tightly shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, with eight-foot posts, a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trapdoors, a door at one end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying regular prices for materials but counting none of my labor, all of which I did myself, was as follows. I list the details because hardly anyone knows exactly what their house costs, and fewer still the cost of each material:

Boards.......................... $ 8.03½, mostly from the shanty.  
Refuse shingles for roof and sides......... 4.00  
Laths...................................... 1.25  
Two second-hand windows with glass......... 2.43  
One thousand old bricks................... 4.00  
Two casks of lime......................... 2.40 That was high.  
Hair...................................... 0.31 More than needed.  
Mantle-tree iron......................... 0.15  
Nails..................................... 3.90  
Hinges and screws......................... 0.14  
Latch..................................... 0.10  
Chalk..................................... 0.01  
Transportation........................... 1.40 I carried a good part —— on my back.  
In all.............................. $28.12½

These include all materials except the timber, stones, and sand, which I claimed as a squatter. I also have a small woodshed adjoining it, made mostly from leftover building scraps.

I plan to build a house that will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and costs no more than my current home.

I found that a student seeking shelter can secure one for a lifetime for no more than what he currently pays in yearly rent. If I seem to boast more than is proper, my excuse is that I do so on behalf of humanity, not myself; my own faults and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my claim. Despite the widespread cant and hypocrisy—chaff that is hard to separate from the wheat and for which I am as sorry as anyone—I will breathe freely and stretch out in this respect, as it is such a relief to both body and mind; and I am determined not to become the devil’s advocate through false humility. I will try to speak a good word for the truth. At Cambridge College, the rent alone for a student’s room, little bigger than mine, is thirty dollars per year. The college has the edge of building thirty-two rooms together under one roof, but the occupant suffers the bother of having many noisy neighbors and perhaps living on the fourth floor. I cannot help but think that if we applied real wisdom here, not only would less formal education be necessary—because more would already have been gained—but the financial burden of getting an education would greatly diminish. The conveniences a student wants at Cambridge or elsewhere involve a sacrifice of life and money ten times greater than is needed if managed properly. The items most costly are never those that students need most. Tuition, for example, is a major expense, while the more valuable lessons obtained from associating with the most cultivated peers are free of charge. The usual method of founding a college is to collect money, and, following the principle of division of labor—which should always be used carefully—to hire a contractor who sees only profit, who in turn hires workers (often Irishmen or others) to physically lay the foundations, while students prepare themselves to attend; and for these missteps, future generations must pay. I believe it would be better if the students, or those to benefit, even laid the foundation themselves. The student who gains leisure and solitude by systematically dodging any necessary labor cheats himself of the very experience that makes leisure worthwhile. 

“But,” someone says, “you don’t mean students should work with their hands and not their heads?” Not exactly, but something close; I mean they should not play at life, or merely study it, while the community supports them in this expensive game, but should instead truly live it from beginning to end. How better to learn to live than by trying the experiment directly? This would stimulate their minds as much as mathematics. If I wanted a boy to learn about arts and sciences, I would not go the usual route—sending him to a professor to “study” life through telescopes or microscopes and never with his own eye; to study chemistry and not learn how bread is made, or mechanics without knowing how work is earned; to search for Neptune’s moons without noticing the motes in his own eye, or what vagabond he might orbit; or be consumed by the monsters around him while peering at those in a drop of vinegar. Who would advance more in a month: the boy who made his own jackknife from the ore he dug and smelted, reading as needed, or the boy who simply attended lectures on metallurgy and received a Rodgers’ penknife from his father? Who is more likely to cut his fingers? … To my surprise, when I left college I was told I had studied navigation! If I had just taken a single trip down the harbor, I would have known more about it. Even the *poor* student studies only *political* economy, while the economy of living—which is true philosophy—is not truly taught in our colleges. So while he reads Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father hopelessly into debt.

As with our colleges, so it is with a hundred “modern improvements”: they hold an illusion; there is not always real progress. The devil continues to collect compound interest on his early and continuing investments in them. Our inventions are usually fancy toys that distract us from serious matters. They are just improved means to reach an unimproved end, an end all too easy to reach (as railroads now lead to Boston or New York). We rush to build a telegraph from Maine to Texas, but perhaps neither state has anything important to say. It’s like the man eager to meet a famous deaf woman, who when presented and handed her ear trumpet, had nothing to say. As if the goal were simply to talk fast, not sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic to bring the old world weeks closer to the new; but perhaps the first news passed through will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. In the end, a man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages; he is no evangelist, nor does he wander around eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt Flying Childers ever carried a sack of corn to the mill.

Someone says, “I wonder you don’t save money; you like to travel—you could take the train to Fitchburg today and see the country.” But I’m wiser than that. I have learned that the fastest traveler is he who goes on foot. I say: let’s see who gets there first. It’s thirty miles; the fare is ninety cents—nearly a day’s wages (I recall when laborers on this same road earned sixty cents a day). Well, I set off on foot and arrive before night; I have traveled like this for weeks at a time. Meanwhile, you’ll be working all day just to earn your fare, and will arrive this evening or maybe tomorrow, if you’re lucky enough to get a job in time. Really, you’ll be working here most of the day instead of going to Fitchburg. Even if the railroad encircled the world, I think I would keep ahead of you; and if it’s a matter of really seeing the country and gaining experience that way, I would just have to lose your company entirely.

Such is a universal law that no man can outwit, and even in the case of the railroad, we may say it is as broad as it is long. Making a railroad around the world for all people is equal to grading the whole planet. People vaguely believe that if they keep investing energy (and money) in such tasks, soon everyone will be able to ride everywhere in no time and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts “All aboard!”—when the smoke clears and the steam condenses, only a few are riding while the rest are run over; this is called, and truly is, “A melancholy accident.” Surely, those who earn their fare can ride, if they survive long enough, but by then they will have lost the spirits and desire to travel. Spending the best part of life making money to only enjoy a questionable freedom at the end of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make his fortune so that he might later return to England and live like a poet. He should have just gone to the attic at once. “What!” cry a million Irishmen from their shanties, “Is not this railroad a good thing?” Yes, relatively; you could have done worse, but I wish, as my brothers, that you might have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.

Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars honestly and pleasantly to cover unusual expenses, I planted about two and a half acres of light, sandy soil near it, mainly with beans, and also a bit with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot is eleven acres, mostly growing up in pines and hickories, which was sold the year before for eight dollars and eight cents per acre. A local farmer said it was “good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on.” I did not put manure on this land, not being the owner and only a squatter, and not planning to cultivate this much again, and I did not quite hoe it all even once. I dug out several cords of stumps while ploughing—these provided me with fuel for a long time, and left small patches of virgin soil that produced noticeably more beans all summer. The dead, largely worthless wood behind my house, and driftwood from the pond, supplied the rest of my fuel. I had to hire a man and a team for ploughing, though I handled the plough myself. My farm expenses for the first season, for tools, seed, labor, and so on, were $14.72½. The corn seed was given to me (corn seed usually costs nothing unless you plant too much). I harvested twelve bushels of beans, eighteen bushels of potatoes, plus some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn and turnips were planted too late to yield anything. My whole income from the farm was

$ 23.44  
Deducting the outgoes,........... 14.72½  
—————  
There are left,................. $ 8.71½,

besides the produce consumed and on hand valued at $4.50—my stored surplus easily balancing a little grass I didn’t grow. All things considered, including the value of one’s soul and of the present day, despite the briefness of my experiment—in fact, partly *because* it was temporary—I believe I did better than any farmer in Concord that year.

The next year, I did even better; I spaded up all the land needed—about a third of an acre—and found, after both years’ experience, and without being swayed by the many famous manuals on farming (Arthur Young’s included), that if a person lives simply, eats only what he grows, grows only what he eats, and does not trade it for a poor quantity of more luxurious and costly things, only a few rods of ground are needed. It is cheaper to spade up fresh land than to use animals or manure the old, and all the necessary farm work can be done in odd summer hours left-handed, so to speak; thus, one need not be tied to an ox, horse, cow, or pig as now. I wish to speak impartially on this, not as someone invested in current economic or social systems. I was more independent than any Concord farmer; I wasn’t attached to a house or a farm, but could follow whatever inspiration moved me, crooked as it often was. Even had my house burned or my crops failed, I would have been nearly as well off as before.

I often think that men are not so much the keepers of livestock as livestock are the keepers of men—animals are actually the freer. Men and oxen trade labor, but if we consider only essential tasks, oxen have the upper hand, their fields being vastly larger. Men do their part mainly in six weeks of haying—a strenuous task. Certainly, no truly wise society, no nation of philosophers, would make the mistake of using animal labor. Of course, there never has been, and may not soon be, such a nation, nor am I sure it is desirable. However, *I* would never have broken a horse or ox and taken him in for whatever labor he could do for me, fearing I would become just a stableman or herder; and if this benefits society, are we sure that one person’s gain is not someone else’s loss, and that the stable-boy is as satisfied as his master? Even if some public works would not have been built otherwise, let man and ox share that glory; but does this mean greater works couldn’t have been accomplished otherwise? As soon as people start doing not just essential or artistic work, but idle and luxurious work using these animals, just a few people do all the trading—in other words, become slaves of the strongest. People then work for the animal within and, as a symbol, the animal outside. Though we have many substantial brick and stone houses, a farmer’s prosperity is still measured by how much his barn dwarfs his house. This town is said to have the biggest barns for animals around, and rivals any in public buildings; but there are very few halls for free worship or open discussion in the county. It shouldn’t be by their architecture—perhaps not even by their intelligence—that peoples hope to memorialize themselves. How much more admirable is the Bhagvat-Geeta compared to all the Eastern ruins! Towers and temples are the luxuries of princes. A simple, independent mind does not toil on command from any prince. Genius is not bound to any emperor, nor is its matter silver, gold, or marble, except in the smallest way. Why, then, so much stone chiseled? When I was in Arcadia, I heard no stone hammering. Peoples are obsessed with leaving behind great stone monuments, but what if they cared as much about refining their manners? A single piece of wisdom would outlast a monument as tall as the moon. I prefer to see stones in their place. The greatness of Thebes was a crude greatness. Better a small stone wall around an honest man’s field than the hundred-gated Thebes, which strayed so far from life’s real purpose. The religions and civilizations that are truly barbaric build grand temples; what you might call Christianity does not. Most of a nation’s stonework is for its tombs. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, I marvel less at them than at the fact so many people could spend their lives building a tomb for an ambitious fool whom it would have been wiser to drown, and then toss his body to the dogs. I might find some excuse for them and him, but have no time for that. The religion and love of art of these builders—the same everywhere, be it an Egyptian temple or the U.S. Bank—cost more than it’s worth. The chief impulse is vanity, with a bit of hunger for garlic and bread and butter. Mr. Balcom, a bright young architect, sketches it behind his Vitruvius with a hard pencil; the job is given to Dobson & Sons, stonemasons. When thirty centuries look down on it, people then look up. As for your grand monuments, there was once a madman here who tried to dig through to China; he got so far, he claimed, he could hear the Chinese dishes rattle. But I will not go out of my way to admire his hole. Many wonder about the monuments of East and West—who built them. For myself, I’d rather know who *didn’t* build them—who were above such trivialities. But to continue with my statistics.

Through work in surveying, carpentry, and various village day-labor (for I have as many trades as fingers), I earned $13.34. My food expenses for eight months (July 4 to March 1), not counting potatoes, green corn, and peas I grew, nor the value of what was on hand, came to:

Rice,................... $ 1.73½  
Molasses,................ 1.73  Cheaper than any other sweetener.  
Rye meal,................ 1.04¾  
Indian meal,............. 0.99¾  Cheaper than rye.  
Pork,.................... 0.22

All experiments which failed:  
Flour,................... 0.88  Costs more than Indian meal, both in money and effort.  
Sugar,................... 0.80  
Lard,.................... 0.65  
Apples,.................. 0.25  
Dried apple,............. 0.22  
Sweet potatoes,.......... 0.10  
One pumpkin,............. 0.06  
One watermelon,.......... 0.02  
Salt,.................... 0.03

Yes, I did spend $8.74 in total on food; but I wouldn’t so openly confess this if I didn’t know that most of my readers are just as guilty as I am, and that their actions would look no better if published. The next year, I sometimes caught some fish for my dinner, and once I even went so far as to kill a woodchuck that had been raiding my bean-field—to bring about his “transmigration,” as a Tartar might say—and eat him, partly as an experiment. Though it gave me brief satisfaction, despite a strong musky taste, I realized that no amount of habit would make this a good practice, even if it seemed easier to have your woodchucks served by the village butcher.

Clothing and some incidental expenses during the same period, though little can be fully concluded from this item, amounted to

$8.40¾  
Oil and some household utensils......... 2.00

So, all expenses, except those for washing and mending—which were mostly done outside the house, and I have yet to receive those bills—and these are all, and even more than, the typical ways money is spent in this part of the world, were:

House................................. $ 28.12½  
Farm one year.......................... 14.72½  
Food eight months...................... 8.74  
Clothing, etc., eight months........... 8.40¾  
Oil, etc., eight months................ 2.00

——————  
Total............................. $ 61.99¾

Now, I address myself to those readers who must earn their living. Against these expenses, I made the following by selling farm produce:

$23.44  
Earned by day-labor.................... 13.34  
——————  
Total.............................. $36.78

Subtracting this from my total expenses leaves a balance of $25.21¾—almost exactly the amount I started with, and the measure of what I would have to spend—and, in return, I gained leisure, independence, and health, along with a comfortable house to live in as long as I wished.

These statistics, however accidental and perhaps lacking in much instruction, have a certain completeness and therefore a certain value. Nothing was given to me for which I haven’t done some accounting. From the above, you can see that my food alone cost me about twenty-seven cents a week. For nearly two years after this, my diet was rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt, and I drank only water. It seemed fitting for me to live mainly on rice, as I enjoyed Indian philosophy so much. To answer some persistent critics, I’ll note that if I sometimes ate out, as I always had done and hope to do again, it was often disruptive to my domestic routine. But since eating out was a regular part of my life anyway, it doesn’t really affect a comparison like this.

From my two years’ experience, I learned that it takes incredibly little effort to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this climate; that a person can live on a diet as simple as that of animals and still remain healthy and strong. I have been quite satisfied with a meal of purslane (*Portulaca oleracea*) that I picked in my cornfield, boiled, and salted. I provide the Latin name for the savoriness of its common name. And really, what more does a reasonable man need, in peaceful times on ordinary afternoons, than enough ears of green sweet corn, boiled and served with salt? Even my limited variety was more to please my appetite than out of any health need. Yet people often go hungry, not from lack of necessities, but from craving luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks her son died because he started drinking only water.

Readers will notice that I’m approaching this topic more from an economic than a dietary perspective, and shouldn’t test my restraint unless they have their own pantries well-stocked.

At first, I made bread from pure Indian meal and salt—real hoe-cakes—which I baked outdoors before my fire, on a shingle or on the end of a piece of timber sawn off while building my house; but it would often get smoked and have a piney taste. I tried flour as well, but ended up preferring a mix of rye and Indian meal for its convenience and taste. In cold weather, it was quite entertaining to bake several small loaves in a row, watching and turning them as attentively as an Egyptian tends his hatching eggs. They were a true cereal fruit that I ripened, fragrant to my senses like other fine fruits, and I kept their freshness as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths. I studied the ancient, indispensable art of bread-making, consulting available sources, going back to the first invention of unleavened bread, when people progressed from eating nuts and meats to the milder, more refined diet of bread. I traced this down through the accidental souring of dough—supposedly how leavening was discovered—and through the various fermentations after that, until I came to “good, sweet, wholesome bread,” the staff of life. Leaven, which some people call the soul of bread—the *spiritus* that fills its texture and is preserved like the vestal flame—some valued portion, no doubt, originally brought over on the Mayflower, did its work for America, and its legacy still grows, rising in waves over the land. I always got this starter from the village faithfully—until one morning I forgot the rules and accidentally scalded my yeast. In this way, I discovered that even yeast was not essential—for my discoveries came not by combining things, but by breaking them down—and I’ve happily done without it since, although most housewives insisted you couldn’t make safe and wholesome bread without yeast, and older folks predicted it would ruin my health. Yet I’ve found it’s not necessary, and after going without it for a year, I’m still alive; and I’m glad to be free of the hassle of carrying a bottle in my pocket, which would sometimes leak to my embarrassment. It’s simpler and more respectable to omit it. Humans are animals who adapt to all climates and circumstances better than any others. I didn’t put any sal soda or other acid or alkali into my bread either. It seems I made it following the recipe Marcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before Christ: “Panem depsticium sic facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium indito, aquæ paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu.” Which I understand as—“Make kneaded bread as follows. Wash your hands and mixing bowl well. Put the meal into the bowl, add water little by little, and knead thoroughly. When it’s well kneaded, shape it and bake it under a cover,” that is, in a baking-kettle. No mention of leaven. But I didn’t always have this “staff of life.” At one point, due to a lack of money, I went more than a month without any.

Every New Englander could easily raise all his own grains for bread in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not rely on far-off and unstable markets. Yet, we are still so far from self-sufficiency and simplicity that in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely found in stores, and even hominy or coarser corn is hardly eaten by anyone. Usually, the farmer feeds his cattle and hogs with the grain he’s grown, and buys flour at higher cost—which is at least no healthier—at the store. I saw I could easily grow a bushel or two of rye and Indian corn—since rye grows on the poorest soil and corn doesn’t need the best—and grind them in a hand-mill, so I could do without rice and pork. If I needed some kind of sweetener, I found I could make good molasses from pumpkins or beets, and I realized I only needed to plant a few maples to get it even more easily. While these were growing, I could use various substitutes besides those I’ve mentioned. “For,” as the Forefathers sang,—

“we can make liquor to sweeten our lips  
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips.”

Finally, regarding salt, that most basic of all groceries, getting it might offer a good reason to visit the seashore—or, if I decided to go without salt entirely, I would probably drink less water. I have not learned that the Indians ever went to any trouble to obtain it.

In this way, I could avoid all trade and barter when it came to my food, and with shelter already secured, my only remaining concerns would be clothing and fuel. The pants I am wearing now were woven in a farmer’s household—thank Heaven, there is still so much virtue in humanity; for I believe the step from farmer to factory worker is as great and significant as from human to farmer. In a new land, fuel becomes more of a burden than a necessity. As for a home, if I were not still allowed to squat, I could have purchased an acre at the same price for which the land I farmed was sold—eight dollars and eight cents. But as things stood, I believed that by squatting I actually increased the land’s value.

There's a certain kind of skeptic who sometimes asks me whether I think it's possible to live on only vegetables. To get right to the heart of the matter—the root is faith—I often answer that I could live on board nails. If they can’t grasp that, there’s not much of what I say they’ll understand. For my part, I welcome experiments like someone attempting, for two weeks, to live on hard, raw corn straight off the cob, using his teeth for mortar. The squirrels have tried this and succeeded. Humanity as a whole is interested in such experiments, though a few elderly women, unable to try them or who own shares in local mills, may be upset.

My furniture—partly handmade by me, the rest acquired at no cost, for which I have reported—consisted of a bed, table, desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches across, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, a cup, a spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. No one is so poor that they must sit on a pumpkin—that’s just laziness. There are plenty of my favorite kind of chairs in the village attics, free for the taking. Furniture! Thank God, I am able to sit and stand without needing a furniture warehouse. Who but a philosopher would not feel embarrassed seeing his furniture packed on a cart, traveling upcountry exposed to the sun and people’s eyes—a pitiful sight of empty boxes? That, I say, is Spaulding’s furniture. I could never tell, by looking at such a cartload, whether its owner was supposedly rich or poor; the owner always seemed impoverished. In fact, the more of such things you have, the poorer you are. Each load looks as though it contains the contents of a dozen shanties, and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Why do we ever *move*, except to be rid of our furniture, our *cast-offs*? Ultimately we leave this world for another, newly furnished, and leave behind our possessions to be burned. It’s like having all these traps fastened to one’s belt, unable to travel across rough ground without dragging them along—dragging his trap. The lucky fox left his tail in the trap. The muskrat chews off his third leg to be free. No wonder humanity has lost its flexibility. How often do people find themselves stuck! “Sir, if I may ask, what do you mean by ‘stuck’?” If you have insight, whenever you meet someone, you’ll see everything he owns, even what he pretends not to own, trailing behind him, from kitchen furniture to every bit of useless stuff he saves but won’t burn. He seems to be harnessed to it, making whatever progress he can. I consider one to be stuck who passes through a small opening where his overloaded sled of furniture can’t follow. I feel compassion when I see some neat, seemingly unburdened man talking about his “furniture”—whether it’s insured or not. “But what should I do with my furniture?” In that moment, even the most cheerful person is caught in a web. Even those who long seemed to have none, if you look closer, will have some stored away in someone’s barn. I see England today as an old gentleman traveling with far too much baggage—the result of long years of housekeeping—with neither the courage nor willingness to burn it: great trunk, small trunk, bandbox, bundle. Throw away at least the first three. Today, a healthy man would find it a challenge to pick up his bed and walk, and I'd certainly advise the sick to lay down their bed and run. When I see an immigrant staggering under a bundle containing all he owns—looking like a giant growth on his neck—I pity him, not for the smallness of his possessions, but for having so much to carry. If I have to drag a trap, I’ll see that it’s a light one that won’t catch me in a vital spot. But maybe the wisest thing is never to put your paw in one at all.

I should add that I had no expense for curtains, for I only needed to keep out the sun and moon, and I’m happy for them to look in. The moon won’t sour my milk or spoil my meat, nor will the sun harm my furniture or fade my nonexistent carpets. If the sun is sometimes a bit too generous, I find it more economical to retreat behind a natural curtain than to add another item to housekeeping. A lady once offered me a mat, but because there was neither space nor time for such a thing in my house, I declined, choosing instead to wipe my feet on the grass outside my door. It’s best to avoid the seeds of trouble.

Not long ago, I attended the auction of a deacon’s belongings—for his life had not been in vain:

“The evil that men do lives after them.”

As usual, most of his effects were useless items that had accumulated since his father's time. Among them was a dried tapeworm. And now, after decades in his attic and other dusty nooks, these things weren't burned; instead of a *bonfire*—a cleansing destruction—there was an *auction*, an increase in their number. Neighbors eagerly gathered to view and buy them, transporting them to their own attics to accumulate until after their own deaths, when the process begins again. When a man dies, he kicks up dust.

Perhaps we might profit from imitating some customs of so-called “savage” nations, for they at least mimic shedding their old burdens annually. They understand the idea, whether or not they achieve it. Would it not be worthwhile for us to celebrate a “busk,” or “feast of first fruits,” as Bartram describes among the Mucclasse Indians? “When a town celebrates the busk,” he writes, “having first acquired new clothes, new pots, pans, and utensils, they gather all their worn-out clothes and worthless items, clean their houses and the whole town, and heap all the rubbish and old grain together and burn it. After taking medicine and fasting for three days, they extinguish all fires in the town. During this fast, they refrain from every physical and emotional indulgence. A general amnesty is declared; all offenders may return to town.—”

“On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square; every home is then supplied with this new, pure flame.”

They then feast on the new corn and fruit, dance and sing for three days, and over the following four days, welcome friends from neighboring towns who have prepared and purified themselves in the same way.

The Mexicans also practiced a similar purification every fifty-two years, believing that was when it was time for the world to end.

I know of no truer sacrament—an “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,” as the dictionary puts it—than this, and I have no doubt they were originally divinely inspired to act so, though they have no biblical record of the revelation.

For over five years, I supported myself only by my own manual labor. I discovered that by working for about six weeks a year, I could cover all my living expenses. The rest of my winters and most of my summers were entirely my own for study. I thoroughly tried teaching school, but found my expenses were over-proportional to my income; I was forced to dress, behave, and think according to others’ standards, and my time was wasted. Since I did not teach out of love for my fellow humans, but just to earn a living, that was a failure. I tried going into business; but found it would take ten years to get established, and by then I would likely be headed for ruin. I actually feared I might be “successful” in business by that time. When I was looking for a way to earn a living—cautious after my painful experiences with meeting others’ expectations—I often thought seriously about picking huckleberries. That, I felt sure, I could do, and its modest profits might be enough; as my greatest skill was needing little—requiring hardly any capital, and very little distraction from my usual thoughts, or so I naively believed. While my friends easily went into business or the professions, I thought this occupation similar enough: roaming the hills in summer to gather berries and then casually selling them, as if I were tending the flocks of Admetus. I also imagined gathering wild herbs or carrying loads of evergreens to villagers who missed the woods, even to the city by the cartload. But I have since learned that trade corrupts everything it touches, and no matter what you are vending, even divine messages, all the curses of trade come along.

Since I valued some things more than others, and especially treasured my independence, I never wanted to spend time earning luxury carpets, fancy furniture, gourmet food, or a house in the Greek or Gothic style—not yet. If there are those who can gain these things without being distracted, and know how to enjoy them, I gladly leave them to it. Some are “industrious,” and seem to love labor for labor's sake—or maybe because it keeps them out of worse trouble; I have nothing at present to say to them. To those who wouldn't know what to do with more leisure time, I might recommend they work twice as hard—work until they've paid their way and earned their freedom. For myself, I found day-laboring the most independent job, particularly since it takes only thirty to forty days a year to support oneself. The day's work ends at sunset, and then the laborer is free to pursue his real interests, but the employer, always speculating, gets no break all year long.

In short, I am convinced—by faith and experience—that supporting oneself on this earth is not a hardship but an amusement, if we choose to live simply and wisely; the pastimes of simpler people are now the “sports” of the more artificial. It's not necessary for a man to earn his living by the sweat of his brow unless he sweats more easily than I do.

A young man I know who inherited a few acres told me that he would live as I do, *if he had the resources*. I would not have anyone adopt *my* way of living, for before he has learned it, I may have found a new one; I want as much variety among people as possible. But each person should be diligent to discover and follow *his own* path—not just follow his parents' or neighbors'. Let the youth build, plant, or sail, so long as he is not prevented from doing what he says he wants to do. We are wise only at a single mathematical point, as the sailor or escaped slave keeps his eye on the Polestar, and that’s enough for an entire life. We may not reach our destination on schedule, but we will stay on the right course.

Of course, what holds true for one holds even more so for many, since a large house costs proportionally less than a small one—a single roof can shelter many rooms, a single cellar or wall can serve several. Still, I preferred living alone. Also, building your own house will generally be cheaper than trying to convince someone of the benefits of a shared wall; and even then, for cost savings, the shared wall would need to be thin, and your cohabitant may prove to be a poor neighbor who neglects maintenance. Most cooperation is only partial and shallow; and what little real cooperation there is goes almost unnoticed, like a harmony no one else hears. If a man has faith, he will cooperate with anyone else of faith; if not, he will keep living like everyone else, no matter his company. True cooperation means, in every sense, *making a living together*. I recently heard of two young men planning to travel together—one earning his way as he went, the other carrying a bill of exchange. It was obvious they would soon part—since one would not *work* at all—at the first real test. Above all, as I’ve suggested, a man who travels alone can leave immediately; one traveling with company must wait for his partner, which may take a very long time.

But all this is very selfish, some of my fellow townsfolk have said. I admit I have practiced very little philanthropy. I've made a few personal sacrifices, including forgoing this pleasure as well. Some people have tried everything to persuade me to support a poor family in town; and if I had nothing else to do—for idle hands find the devil’s work—I might try such a pastime. Still, when I have felt inclined to be charitable in this way, and have even offered to maintain certain poor people as comfortably as I do myself, they have all, without hesitation, chosen to remain poor. While so many of my townspeople are devoted to their neighbors’ good, I hope that at least one might be left to pursue other, perhaps less humane endeavors. Genius is as necessary for charity as for anything else. As for Doing-good, it is a full profession. I have honestly tried it, and, oddly, found it does not suit me. I doubt I would ever abandon my own vocation to do the good that society demands, even to save the universe from destruction; and I believe a greater, steadfast commitment like this is what sustains the world. But I would never interfere with anyone’s pursuit of their genius; and to those who undertake this work, which I pass up, with all their heart and soul and life, I say: persevere, even if the world calls it evil—it probably will.

I don’t assume my case is unique; I’m sure many readers could make a similar argument. At *doing something*—though I won’t guarantee my neighbors would judge it good—I believe I’d be a valuable hire, but it’s up to the employer to discover what that is. Whatever *good* I do, in the usual sense, comes as a byproduct, mostly unplanned. People say, in action, Begin as you are, without mainly striving to become better, and with pre-determined kindness, go about doing good. If I were to give advice, I would say: focus on *being* good. As if the sun, after burning as brightly as a moon or sixth-magnitude star, began going about like a mischievous sprite, peeking in every window, inspiring lunatics, spoiling food, and making darkness visible—instead of steadily increasing its warmth and blessing until none can look him in the face, traveling always in his own path, doing good by being what he is. When Phaeton, eager to prove his divinity through good deeds, had the sun’s chariot for a day, he left disaster, burning down heavenly houses and scorching Earth, creating the Sahara, until Jupiter cast him down with a thunderbolt, and the sun, grieving, dimmed for a year.

There is no odor as foul as that which comes from goodness gone bad. It is human, it is divine—like carrion. If I knew for certain that a man was coming to my house with the deliberate intention of doing me good, I would run for my life, as from that dry, parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth, nose, ears, and eyes with dust until you are suffocated—afraid that I might catch some of his so-called good, some of its poison mixing with my blood. No—in this case, I would rather suffer harm in the natural way. A man is not a good *man* to me just because he will feed me if I am starving, or warm me if I am freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I happen to fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that would do as much. Philanthropy isn’t love for one’s fellow man in the fullest sense. Howard was undoubtedly a very kind and worthy man in his way, and has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred Howards to *us* if their philanthropy does not help *us* in our best state, when we are most deserving of help? I have never heard of a philanthropic meeting where it was sincerely proposed to do any good to me or those like me.

The Jesuits were completely thwarted by those Indians who, while being burned at the stake, suggested new forms of torture to their tormentors. Since they were above physical suffering, it sometimes happened that they were also above any consolation the missionaries could offer; and the law of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” was less persuasive to ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were treated, who loved their enemies in a new way, and came very close to truly forgiving everything done to them.

Be sure to give the poor the help they truly need, even if it is simply your example that leaves them far behind. If you give money, give yourself with it; do not just abandon the money to them. We make strange mistakes sometimes. Often, the poor man is not as cold or hungry as he is dirty, ragged, and coarse. Sometimes, this is due to his taste as much as his misfortune. If you give him money, he might buy more rags with it. I used to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond in such shabby clothes, while I shivered in my cleaner and more fashionable garments—until, on a bitterly cold day, one who had fallen into the water came to my house to warm up, and I saw him take off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings before he got to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged, true enough, and he could afford to refuse the *extra* garments I offered him, because he had so many *intra* ones. This dunking was exactly what he needed. Then I began to pity myself, realizing it would be a greater charity to give me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop to him. There are a thousand people hacking at the branches of evil for every one who strikes at the root, and it may be that the person who spends the most time and money on the needy is actually, by his way of life, doing most to create the very misery he tries in vain to relieve. It's like the pious slave-breeder devoting every tenth slave's proceeds to buying a Sunday’s freedom for the rest. Some show kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Wouldn’t they be even kinder if they worked there themselves? You boast of spending a tenth of your income on charity; perhaps you should spend the other nine-tenths that way, and be done with it. Society recovers only a tenth of the property that way. Is this due to the generosity of the person who possesses it, or to the failure of the officers of justice?

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue truly valued by mankind. In fact, it is greatly overrated—and it is our selfishness that overrates it. One day, a sturdy poor man here in Concord praised a fellow townsman to me, saying he was kind to the poor—meaning himself. The kindly uncles and aunts of the human 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, who, after naming her scientific, literary, and political greats—Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others—went on to list her Christian heroes. As if his profession required it, he placed them above all the rest, as the greatest of the great: Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Everyone can sense the falsehood and platitude of this. The last were not England’s best men and women; perhaps only her best philanthropists.

I do not want to take away any of the praise due to philanthropy, but only to demand justice for all who, through their lives and works, bless humanity. I do not value most a man’s uprightness and benevolence, which are, so to speak, his stem and leaves. Those plants whose wilted greenness we use to brew tea for the sick serve a humble purpose and are most used by charlatans. I want the flower and fruit of a man; someone from whom some fragrance drifts over to me and whose ripeness flavors our interaction. His goodness should not be a temporary act, but a steady abundance, costing him nothing, and of which he is unaware. This is charity that covers a multitude of sins. Too often, the philanthropist surrounds humanity with reminders of his old griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should share our courage, not our despair, our health and comfort, not our illness, and take care that none of this spreads by contagion. From what southern plains comes the wailing voice? Under what skies live the “heathen” we would send light to? Who is the drunken and violent man we want to redeem? If anything is wrong with a man, so that he cannot do his work—if he even has a pain in his bowels (the seat of sympathy)—he immediately sets out to reform the world. Being a small world unto himself, he discovers (and this is quite true) that the world has been eating green apples. To him, the globe itself is a big green apple, and there is awful danger that mankind will nibble before it is ripe; so right away, his drastic philanthropy seeks out the Eskimo and the Patagonian, and extends to the crowded Indian and Chinese villages. Thus, after a few years of philanthropic effort—while the powers that be use him for their own purpose—he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both cheeks, as if it were starting to ripen, and life becomes a little less bitter and more pleasant to live. I have never dreamed of an enormity worse than what I have done. I have never known, and never will know, a worse man than myself.

I believe what saddens the reformer is not just his sympathy with others in distress; even if he is the holiest son of God, it is his own private ailment. Fix this—let spring come to him, let the morning rise over his bed—and he will leave his well-meaning companions without apology. My own excuse for not lecturing against tobacco use is that I never chewed it; that’s a penalty for reformed tobacco-chewers to bear, though there are things enough I have “chewed” that I could lecture against. If you are ever tempted into any of these philanthropies, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand does—for it’s not even worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoelaces. Take your time and start some honest work.

Our manners have been corrupted by association with the saints. Our hymn-books echo with melodious curses of God and of tolerating him forever. One would think even the prophets and redeemers preferred to soothe man's fears rather than confirm his hopes. Nowhere is there recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life—no lasting praise of God. All health and success is a blessing to me, no matter how far off it seems; all disease and failure saddens me and does me harm, no matter how much sympathy it gets from or gives to me. If we truly want to restore humanity by genuinely natural, Indian, botanic, or magnetic methods, let us first be as simple and healthy as Nature ourselves; clear away the clouds from our own brows, and let a little life into our pores. Do not linger to be an overseer of the poor, but strive to become one of the worthies of the world.

I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, “They asked a wise man, saying, ‘Of the many celebrated trees which the Most High God has created lofty and full of shade, none is called azad, or free, except for the cypress, which bears no fruit. What is the mystery in this?’ He replied, ‘Each has its proper produce and appointed season, during which it is fresh and blooming, and when that time passes, it is dry and withered. The cypress alone is not subject to this cycle, but is always flourishing. Of such nature are the azads, or religious independents.—Do not set your heart on what is temporary; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad after the caliphs are extinct. If your hand has plenty, be generous like the date tree; but if you have nothing to give, be an azad or free man, like the cypress.’”

COMPLEMENTAL VERSES

The Pretensions of Poverty

“Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,
To claim a station in the firmament
Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,
Nurtures 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,
Degrades nature, and numbs sense,
And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.
We don’t need the dull company
Of your forced temperance,
Or that unnatural dullness
That knows neither joy nor sorrow; nor your forced
Falsely exalted passive fortitude
Above the active. This low abject brood,
That fix their seats in mediocrity,
Become your servile minds; but we advance
Such virtues only as admit excess,

Brave, generous deeds, royal splendor,  
All-seeing wisdom, boundless magnanimity,  
That recognizes no limits, and that heroic virtue  
For which the ancients left no term,  
But only examples, like Hercules,  
Achilles, Theseus. Back to your hated cell;  
And when you see the newly enlightened sphere,  
Strive only to know what those heroes were.”  
                                    T. CAREW

## Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

At a certain point in our lives, we tend to view every spot as a possible place for a house. I have thus surveyed the land on all sides within a dozen miles of where I live. In my mind, I have bought all the farms in turn—for all were for sale, and I knew their prices. I walked over each farmer’s property, tasted his wild apples, talked farming with him, agreed to his price in my imagination—sometimes even for more—mortgaging it to him in thought; even put a higher price on it—accepted everything but an actual deed—accepted his word as his deed, for I dearly love conversation—cultivated both the land and, to some degree, the man, I hope, and moved on when I’d enjoyed it enough, leaving him to carry on. This experience earned me the reputation of a sort of real-estate broker among my friends. Wherever I sat, there I could imagine living, and so the landscape would radiate from me. What is a house but a *sedes*, a seat?—and better if it is a country seat. I found many potential house sites unlikely to be developed soon, which some might think too far from the village, but in my view, the village was too far from them. “Well, I could live there,” I’d say; and for an hour, or a summer and a winter, I did live there in my mind; saw how I could let the years pass, endure the winter, and watch spring return. The future inhabitants of this area, wherever they may put their houses, can be sure I have already anticipated them. One afternoon was enough to lay out the land into orchard, woodlot, and pasture; to decide which fine oaks or pines to leave before the door, and from where each dead tree would be best seen; and then I let it lie, perhaps fallow, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to leave alone.

My imagination took me so far that I even secured the refusal of several farms—the refusal was all I wanted—but I never suffered from actual ownership. The closest I came was when I bought the Hollowell place and had begun sorting seeds and gathering materials to make a wheelbarrow to help run the farm; but before the owner gave me the deed, his wife—every man has such a wife—changed her mind and wanted to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to let him out of the deal. Truthfully, I had only ten cents to my name, and I couldn’t calculate whether I was the man with ten cents, or with a farm, or with ten dollars, or all at once. Still, I let him keep both the ten dollars and the farm, for I had carried it far enough; or, to be generous, I sold him the farm for exactly what I paid, and, since he wasn’t rich, made him a gift of ten dollars, through which I still had my ten cents, seeds, and wheelbarrow materials left over. In this way, I learned that I had been a rich man without harming my poverty. But I kept the landscape, and since then, I yearly harvest what it gives without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes—

“I am monarch of all I *survey*,  
My right there is none to dispute.”

I have often seen a poet withdraw after having enjoyed the best part of a farm, while the gruff farmer believed he’d only given away a handful of wild apples. It takes years before the owner realizes that a poet, by putting his farm into verse—an admirable kind of invisible fence—has truly claimed it, milked it, skimmed it, gotten all the cream, and left only skimmed milk for the farmer.

The true charm of the Hollowell farm, for me, was its utter seclusion—about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and set off from the main road by a broad field; its river boundary, which, according to the owner, protected it from spring frosts with its fogs, though that meant nothing to me; the house and barn’s gray color and state of decay, the broken fences, all of which put a good distance between me and the last occupant; the hollow, lichen-covered apple trees, chewed by rabbits—showing what my future neighbors would be. Above all, it was my early memories of the place from trips up the river, when the house was hidden behind thick red maples, and I could hear the house dog bark. I was eager to buy it before the owner finished removing rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, or clearing out the young birches that had grown up in the pasture, or made any more so-called improvements. To enjoy these features, I was ready to carry it on—like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders (though I never learned what he was paid for that)—and do all those things whose only explanation was that they might let me claim the land and be left in peace, for I always knew it would bear the richest crop of what I truly wanted if only I could afford to leave it alone. But things happened as I described.

All I can say, then, about farming on a large scale (I have always kept a garden) is that I had my seeds ready. Many believe seeds get better with age. I’m sure time separates the good from the bad; and when I finally do plant, I’ll be less likely to be disappointed. But let me say to my peers, once and for all: As long as possible, live free and uncommitted. It matters little whether your commitment is to a farm or a county jail.

Old Cato, whose “De Re Rusticâ” is my “Cultivator,” says—though every translation I’ve seen makes nonsense of the passage—“When you think of buying a farm, turn it thus in your mind, not to buy in haste; nor spare effort to look at it, and don’t think it enough to go around it just once. The more you go there, the more it will please you, if it is a good one.” I think I shall not buy hastily, but go around and around it all my life, and only be buried in it first—that it might delight me all the more in the end.

My more recent experiment of this kind is the one I mean to describe in detail—putting into one account the experience of two years, for convenience, as I’ve mentioned. I’m not writing an ode to dejection, but aim to crow as lustily as the rooster on his perch at dawn, even if just to wake up my neighbors.

When I first made my home in the woods—that is, began spending both nights and days there—which, by chance, was on Independence Day, the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was unfinished for winter; it was merely a shelter from rain, unplastered, without a chimney. The walls were rough, weatherstained boards, with wide cracks making it cool at night. The upright white-hewn posts and fresh trim gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning when the beams were dew-soaked, so that I imagined by noon some sweet gum would seep out. To my mind, it kept something of this morning freshness all day, recalling a certain house on a mountain I’d visited the year before—an airy, unplastered cabin fit for a traveling god or a goddess to sweep through. The winds that passed over my shelter were like those sweeping mountain ridges, carrying only the broken, ethereal strains of earthly music. The morning wind always blows, and the poem of creation is unbroken—though few have ears for it. Olympus, after all, is just the outward face of the earth everywhere.

The only other house I’d owned—if you can count it—was a tent I used on summer trips, and I still keep it rolled up in my attic. The boat, after passing from owner to owner, is gone down the stream of time. With this more substantial hut, I had made some progress in settling down. This lightly covered frame was a kind of crystallization around me, and it had an effect on the builder too. It was suggestive, almost like an outline sketch. I didn’t need to go outside for air; the indoors had lost none of its freshness. It didn’t feel indoors as much as just behind a door—even in the rainiest weather. The Harivamsa says, “A home without birds is like food without seasoning.” Not so mine: I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds—not by caging one, but by caging myself near them. I was not just closer to those who frequent the orchard and garden, but to the wilder and more thrilling songbirds of the forest, who rarely serenade a town dweller—the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many others.

I was settled by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south of Concord village and a bit higher than it, in the middle of a wide wood between that town and Lincoln, and about two miles south of our only field known to fame, Concord Battle Ground. But I was so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a mile away and all covered with woods, was my farthest horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked on the pond, it struck me like a tarn high up a mountainside, its bottom far above other lakes, and as the sun rose, I saw the pond shed its nightly covering of mist, revealing its calm ripples and smooth reflective surface here and there, as the mists, like ghosts, silently withdrew into the woods—as at the end of some secret nighttime meeting. The dew seemed to cling to the trees longer than usual, as it does on mountainsides.

This small lake was most enjoyable as a companion during the intervals of a gentle August rain, when both air and water were perfectly still, the sky overcast, and the middle of the afternoon felt as serene as evening, while the wood-thrush sang from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than then, and with the clear, shaded air above it, the water, filled with light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven, all the more so. From a nearby hilltop where the trees had recently been cleared, there was pleasing view south across the pond, through a wide gap in the hills forming the shore, where the slopes suggested a river flowing out—though there was none. Standing on tiptoe, I could catch sight of distant blue peaks of far-off mountain ranges to the northwest—real “true-blue” coins from heaven’s mint—and see a portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this spot, I couldn’t see beyond or over the woods around me. It is good to have some water nearby, to give the earth buoyancy. Even the smallest well reveals that the earth is not solid but insular—this matters as much as its ability to keep butter cool. Looking across the pond toward the Sudbury meadows, which during floods appeared raised by a mirage, like coins in a basin, all the land beyond seemed a thin crust, isolated and floated by this small body of water—and I was reminded that the ground where I lived was merely *dry land*.

Though the view from my door was much smaller, I never felt crowded or enclosed. There was enough pasture for my imagination. The low shrub-oak plateau of the opposite shore rose and stretched away toward the Western prairies and the steppes of Tartary, giving ample space for all wandering peoples. “None are happy in the world except those who freely enjoy a wide horizon,” said Damodara, when his herds needed new, larger grazing lands.

Both place and time were changed for me, and I lived nearer to those parts of the universe and those times in history that most fascinated me. Where I lived was as far away as many a region gazed at by astronomers at night. We’re used to imagining rare, delightful places in some remote, celestial corner of the universe, behind the stars of Cassiopeia’s Chair, far from noise and trouble. I discovered that my house was actually situated in such a secluded, but ever new and untouched, part of the universe. If it were worthwhile to settle close to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or just as far from the life I left behind—diminished and glimmering faintly to my nearest neighbor, visible to him only on dark nights. Such was the piece of creation where I had settled;—

“There was a shepherd that did live,  
    And kept his thoughts as high  
As were the hills whereon his flocks  
    Fed him hour by hour.”

What should we think of the shepherd’s life if his flocks always wandered to higher ground than his thoughts?

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life as simple—and, I might say, as innocent—as Nature herself. I have been as genuine a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks were. I rose early and bathed in the pond; that was a sacred act, and among the best things I did. They say that there were characters engraved on King Tching-thang’s bathing tub that read: “Renew yourself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.” I understand that sentiment. Morning restores the heroic ages. I was just as moved by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible, unimaginable circuit through my room at dawn, while I sat with the door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever celebrated fame. It was like Homer’s requiem; an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something universal about it; a constant reminder, unless forbidden, of the world’s perpetual energy and fertility. The morning, the most memorable time of day, is the hour of awakening. In those moments, we are least sleepy; and for at least an hour, some part of us wakes up that slumbers the rest of the day and night. Little can be expected from a day, if it can be called a day, when we are not awakened by our own inner Genius, but by the mechanical prompting of some servant—not awakened by energy and aspiration from inside, accompanied by the undulations of heavenly music instead of factory bells and a sweet fragrance filling the air—to a higher life than that from which we fell asleep; so that even the darkness bears fruit and proves to be as good as light. Anyone who does not believe each day holds a purer, more sacred, and auroral hour than they’ve ever violated has given up on life and is following a path that leads downward and into darkness. After a partial break from his physical life, the soul—or rather, its organs—are renewed daily, and his Genius tries once more to create a noble life. I would say all memorable events happen in the morning and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, “All intelligences awake with the morning.” Poetry, art, and the noblest and most memorable actions start at such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are children of Aurora and sing at sunrise. To one whose strong and responsive mind keeps up with the sun, the day is a never-ending morning. It doesn’t matter what time the clocks show, or what men are doing. Morning is when I’m awake, and there is a dawn inside me. Moral reform is all about refusing sleep. Why do people give such poor accounts of their days, if they haven’t just been sleeping? They aren’t bad at counting. If they hadn’t been overtaken by drowsiness, they would have accomplished something. Millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual work, and only one in a hundred million for a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I’ve never yet met a man who was truly awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical means, but by an endless expectation of dawn, which stays with us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more inspiring fact than the unquestionable ability of people to elevate their lives through deliberate effort. It’s something to be able to paint a picture, or carve a statue, and make a few objects beautiful; but it’s much more glorious to shape and color the very atmosphere and medium we see the world through—something we can do morally. To shape the quality of the day, that is the highest art. Every person is challenged to make his life—down to its details—worthy of comparison with his most elevated and critical moments. If we turned down, or better yet, exhausted, the trivial information we gather, the oracles would clearly tell us how this could be done.

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to face only the essential facts of life, and see if I couldn’t learn what it had to teach—and not, when I came to die, realize I hadn’t lived. I didn’t want to live what was not life—life is so precious; nor did I want to resign myself, unless it was truly necessary. I wanted to live deeply and suck the marrow out of life, to live so robustly and Spartan-like that I would cast out all that wasn’t life, cut a wide swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its simplest form. If it turned out to be mean, then I’d find its full meanness and share that with the world; or if it were sublime, I would know it firsthand, and be able to give a true account of it in my next venture. Most men, it seems to me, exist in a strange uncertainty about life—unsure whether it’s of the devil or of God—and have somewhat hastily concluded that the chief end of man is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

Yet we continue to live meanly, like ants—though the fable claims we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies, we fight with cranes; it’s one mistake after another, one patch upon another, and our best virtue only results from unnecessary and avoidable misery. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man should hardly have to count more than his ten fingers, or at most his ten toes, and combine the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million, count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the chopping sea of civilized life, among the clouds, storms, and countless hazards, a man must live by dead reckoning if he doesn’t want to go under or miss his goal entirely. He needs great skill just to get by. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, eat only one if necessary; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and cut back just as much elsewhere. Our life is like a German Confederacy, composed of petty states, its boundaries forever shifting—so much so that even a German can’t say where its borders are at any given moment. The nation, with all its so-called internal improvements—which are all external and superficial—has become just such an unwieldy, overgrown mess, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury, reckless spending, poor planning, and lack of a worthy goal, just like the millions of households across the land. The only cure for both is strict economy, a stern and even more Spartan simplicity of life and a higher purpose. The country lives too fast. Men think the *Nation* must have commerce, export ice, converse by telegraph, and travel thirty miles per hour, whether *they* need to or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like people is left uncertain. If we don’t lay railroad sleepers and build rails, devoting days and nights to the task, but start tinkering with our *lives* to improve *them*, who will build railroads? And if railroads aren’t built, how will we ever get to heaven in time? But if we stay home and mind our business, who will need railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides on us. Did you ever consider what those sleepers beneath the railroad are? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee. The rails are laid on them, and they’re covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new group is laid down and used; so if some have the pleasure of riding the rails, others have the misfortune of being ridden upon. When the cars run over a sleepwalking man, a spare sleeper in the wrong place, and wake him, they stop the cars and make a big fuss as if it were unusual. I’m glad a group of men is needed for every five miles just to keep the sleepers down and level—it suggests that someday they might get up again.

Why do we live with such hurry and waste of life? We insist on being starved before we’re even hungry. Men say a stitch in time saves nine, so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for *work*, we don’t have any that amounts to much. We have St. Vitus’ dance and can’t keep still. If I merely pulled the parish bell-rope a few times, as for a fire—without setting it off—hardly a man in Concord, despite all his supposed urgent duties, nor a boy, nor a woman, I daresay, would fail to drop everything and follow that sound. Not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if truth be told, just as much to watch it burn—since it must burn, and after all, we didn’t set it—or to watch it be put out and be part of that, if it’s done skillfully; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly a man takes a half-hour nap after lunch without waking up and asking, “What’s the news?” as if the rest of mankind had been on guard for him. Some even ask to be woken every half-hour, for no particular reason; then, to justify it, they recount their dreams. After sleeping, the news is as essential as breakfast. “Please, tell me anything new that’s happened to a man anywhere on the globe”—and he reads over his coffee and rolls that a man has been blinded this morning on the Wachito River; never realizing that he himself lives in the dark, unfathomed cavern of this world, and has only the barest rudiment of sight.

As for me, I could easily do without the post office. I think very few important messages come by mail. Honestly, I doubt I’ve received more than one or two letters in my life—I'm writing this some years later—that were worth the postage. The penny-post is, usually, a system by which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts that is usually made as a joke. And I’m sure I’ve never read any truly significant news in a newspaper. If we read about one man robbed, murdered, killed in an accident, one house burned, one ship wrecked, one steamboat explosion, one cow run over on the Western Railroad, one mad dog killed, or one swarm of grasshoppers in winter—we need not ever read of another. One is enough. Once you know the principle, what do you care for thousands of examples? To a philosopher, all *news* is just gossip, and those who write and read it are like old ladies over their tea. Yet many still crave this gossip. The other day, I heard, there was such a rush at one office to learn the foreign news from the latest mail that several large panes of glass were broken from the crush—news that, I think, a clever writer could compose a year, or even twelve years, in advance with enough accuracy. As for Spain, for example, if you just mention Don Carlos, the Infanta, Don Pedro, Seville, and Granada now and then in the right ratios—they may have changed some names since I last read the papers—and serve up a bullfight when nothing else entertains, it will be perfectly accurate and give just as true an idea of the real state of Spain as any newspaper report. And as for England, her last important news was probably the revolution of 1649; if you just know the history of her average harvest year, you can ignore all further agricultural updates—unless your interests are strictly financial. From what I see, as someone who rarely reads newspapers, nothing new ever seems to happen abroad, French revolutions included.

What news! How much more important to know what never grows old! “Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a messenger to Khoung-tseu to gain his news. Khoung-tseu seated the messenger near him and asked: What is your master doing? The messenger replied respectfully: My master wishes to lessen his faults, but is unable to eliminate them entirely. After the messenger left, the philosopher remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!” The preacher, instead of droning in the ears of tired farmers at the end of the week—since Sunday is really the proper conclusion to a poorly spent week, not the start of a new brave one—should instead thunder out, “Pause! Avast! Why rush, when you move so slowly to any real end?”

Shams and illusions are accepted as the deepest truths, while reality is thought incredible. If people would focus steadfastly on realities, and not let themselves be deceived, life would be as marvelous as a fairy tale or the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If we respected only what is necessary and right, music and poetry would resound through every street. When we are calm and wise, we see that only great and deserving things last—petty fears and pleasures are just shadows of reality. This always feels inspiring and elevated. By closing our eyes, sleeping, and accepting a life of routine and habit, we create a world built on illusions. Children playing at life see its true nature better than adults, who fail to live righteously but believe themselves wiser for their failures. I have read in a Hindu book that “there was a king’s son who, exiled in infancy from his city, was raised by a forester and, on growing up, believed himself of the barbarian race he dwelt with. Later, one of his father’s ministers found him, revealed his true identity, and dispelled his delusion, so he knew he was a prince. So the soul,” the Hindu philosopher says, “by its circumstances, mistakes its own nature until the truth is revealed by a holy teacher, at which time it knows itself as *Brahme*.” I see that we who live in New England persist in living a petty life because we don’t see beneath the surface. We think that what *appears* to be is all there is. If a man walked through this town seeing only the reality, where do you think the “Mill-dam” would go? If he described what he actually saw there, we’d hardly recognize the town. Look at a church, a courthouse, a jail, a shop, or a house, and say honestly what those things are beneath the surface; they’d all fall apart before your real gaze. People think truth is remote, on the edges of the universe, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. Yes, in eternity there’s something fully true and sublime. But all times, places, and occasions are here and now. God himself peaks in the present moment and will never be more divine, no matter how many ages pass. We can only know what is sublime and noble because reality is always soaking and surrounding us. The universe unfailingly answers our conceptions; whether we move quickly or slowly, the track is laid before us. Let us spend our lives dreaming, then. The poet or artist has never imagined a plan so grand that some future person couldn’t bring it to life.

Let’s spend one day as deliberately as nature herself, and not get derailed by every triviality that falls onto the tracks. Let’s rise early and go without breakfast—or break our fast quietly and calmly; let company arrive or leave, let the bells ring and children cry—determined to make a whole day of it. Why should we surrender to circumstance and go with the current? Let’s not be swept into that terrible rapid and whirlpool called dinner, right at the shallows of noon. Get past that without losing your nerve and you’re safe—the rest is downhill. With steady nerves and morning energy, press on, looking away, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it’s hoarse. If the bell rings, why run? Let’s think about what kind of music that is. Let’s anchor ourselves, and work our way steadily down through the mud and slush of opinion, prejudice, tradition, delusion, and appearances—all the debris covering the world, through Paris, London, New York, Boston, Concord, through church and state, poetry, philosophy, and religion—until we reach solid ground and bedrock, which we can call *reality*, and say, This is it, without a doubt; and then begin anew, with a *point d’appui* below flood, frost, and fire—a place where you could build a wall or a state, set a lamp-post securely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, so future ages can measure how deep the floods of illusion have risen over time. If you stand squarely and face-to-face with a fact, you’ll see the sun glitter on both of its surfaces, as if it were a scimitar, and feel its sharp edge split your very heart and marrow, so that you can happily conclude your earthly journey. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we’re dying, let’s hear the death rattle and feel the chill in our limbs; if we’re alive, let’s get about our business.

Time is just the stream I fish in. I drink from it; but even as I do, I see the sandy bottom and notice how shallow it is. Its thin stream slides by, but eternity stays. I want to drink deeper—fish in the sky, whose bottom is paved with stars. I can count none. I don’t even know the first letter of the alphabet. I’ve always regretted not being as wise as the day I was born. Intellect is a cleaver; it splits and makes its way through the heart of things. I don’t want to be any busier with my hands than needed. My head acts as my hands and feet. All my best abilities center there. Instinct tells me my head is for burrowing, as creatures use snouts and paws, and with it I want to dig my way into these hills. I sense the richest vein is nearby—from the divining rod and faint wisps I suspect as much—so here I’ll start to dig.

## Reading

If people were a bit more deliberate in choosing their pursuits, everyone might become, essentially, a student and an observer, since our nature and destiny are interesting to us all. In amassing wealth for ourselves or future generations, in founding a family or state, or gaining fame, we are mortal; but when dealing with truth, we are immortal, and need fear no change or accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindu thinker once raised a corner of the veil covering a statue of the divine; that robe remains lifted still, and I gaze on as fresh a vision as he did, for it was I in him who was bold, and it is he in me who now sees the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has passed since that divinity was revealed. The time we really improve, or which is actually improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.

My home proved more favorable, not just to thought, but to serious reading than a university. Although I was out of range of conventional circulating libraries, I had never been more within reach of those books that travel throughout the world, whose first lines were inscribed on bark and are now copied onto linen paper. As the poet Mîr Camar Uddîn Mast says, “Seated, I have run through the realm of the spiritual world; I have felt this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have felt this joy when drinking the liquor of esoteric doctrines.” I kept Homer’s Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at its pages only now and then. At first, continual labor with my hands—including finishing my house and tending my beans—made deeper study impossible. Yet I sustained myself with the thought of such reading in the future. I read one or two superficial travel books during breaks from my work, until I was ashamed of myself for doing so and asked where it was that *I* lived.

A student can safely read Homer or Æschylus in Greek, for it requires that he somewhat emulate their heroes and dedicate his mornings to their works. The great books, even when printed in our native language, remain in words foreign to our degraded era; to find their meaning, we must search each word and line, imagining a greater sense from whatever wisdom, valor, and generosity we possess. Despite all the modern press and its translations, we are hardly closer to the great writers of the past. Their isolation, and the narrow, rare script in which they are published, remains unchanged. It is worth the youthful effort and precious hours, if only to learn a few ancient words, raised up from street language and made into perpetual inspirations. Even the farmer remembers and repeats a few bits of Latin he’s heard, not in vain. People sometimes talk as if classical studies should one day be replaced by more practical pursuits; but the adventurous student will always study classics, no matter the language or age. After all, what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of mankind? They are the only oracles that haven’t decayed, and hold answers to the latest questions that Delphi and Dodona never could. We might as well skip studying Nature just because she’s old. To read well—that is, to read real books in a real spirit—is a noble exercise, and it will test a reader more than any activity considered valuable today. It takes training like that of an athlete—the focused intention of nearly a whole life. Books must be read as carefully and thoughtfully as they were written. It’s not even enough to speak the language in which they're written, for there is a marked difference between the spoken and the written word, the language heard and the one read. What is spoken is usually fleeting—a sound, a dialect, an unconscious thing learned from our mothers, nearly animal; but what is written is more mature, a “father tongue,” a reserved and precise expression, too significant to be heard aloud, one we must be “reborn” to speak. The masses who merely *spoke* Greek and Latin in the Middle Ages had no more right to *read* works of genius in those languages than by the accident of birth; those works were not written in the everyday Greek or Latin they knew, but in the rarefied language of literature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, and the very materials these works were written on were wasted on them—they valued, instead, cheap literature of their own time. When the European nations developed their own written languages, crude though they were, there was a revival of learning, and scholars could now see from a distance the treasures of antiquity. What the Romans and Greeks could not *hear* for centuries, a few scholars now *read*—and even now, only a few truly do.

Though we may admire the orator’s flashes of eloquence, the finest written words are generally as far above ordinary speech as the stars are above the clouds. *There* the stars are—for those who can, let them be read. The astronomers forever study and comment on them. Unlike our daily conversations, they don’t evaporate. What’s called eloquence in the public forum often turns out to be mere rhetoric in private study. The orator is driven by a fleeting event, and speaks to the immediate crowd, to whoever can *hear* him; but the writer, whose even life is his occasion and who would be distracted by crowds and events, speaks to the intellect and health of society—to anyone in any age who can *understand* him.

No wonder Alexander the Great carried the Iliad on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the finest relic. It is at once closer to us and more universal than any other work of art—closest to life itself. It can be translated into any tongue, and not just be read but literally spoken on every human lip—not just shown on canvas or in marble, but carved out of the breath of life. The sign of an ancient person’s thought becomes a modern person’s speech. Two thousand summers have only given Grecian literature, like her marbles, a deeper golden touch, for they have brought their own clear, celestial atmosphere to all lands, protecting them from time’s decay. Books are humanity’s accumulated wealth and the true inheritance of generations and nations. Books—the oldest and the best—naturally and rightfully belong on the shelves of every home. They have no special cause to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader, common sense will not deny them. Their authors form a natural, irresistible aristocracy more powerful than kings or emperors. When the uneducated but ambitious merchant finally gains leisure and status and is welcomed into circles of wealth and fashion, he inevitably looks toward those higher—even unreachable—circles of intellect and genius, and becomes aware only of his lack of education and the emptiness of his wealth. He proves his good sense by the efforts he makes to secure for his children the intellectual growth he feels deprived of; and in this way, he becomes the founder of a family.

Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in their original languages have only a very incomplete understanding of human history; it's notable that no true translation of them exists in any modern language—unless our own civilization could be considered such a translation. Homer has never truly been presented in English, nor Æschylus, nor even Virgil—works as refined, as perfectly crafted, and nearly as beautiful as the morning itself. Whatever we say of later writers' genius, they have rarely, if ever, matched the intricate beauty, polish, and lifelong, heroic literary efforts of the ancients. Only those who never truly knew the classics speak of forgetting them. We'll be ready to let go of them only when we have the learning and genius to truly appreciate and understand their value. The world will be truly rich when those relics we call the Classics, and the even older and lesser-known sacred texts of different nations, are gathered even more—when the Vaticans are filled with Vedas and Zend-Avestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries deposit their cultural trophies onto the world's forum. By such an accumulation, maybe humanity can scale heaven after all.

The works of the great poets have never yet been truly read by humanity because only great poets are capable of reading them as they deserve. They have mostly been read only as the masses read the stars—astrologically, not scientifically. Most people learn to read only for convenience, the way they learn arithmetic just to keep accounts and avoid being cheated in business; of reading as a noble intellectual pursuit, they know little or nothing. Yet this is the only true reading in the highest sense—not the kind that lulls us like a luxury, letting our better faculties sleep, but the kind that demands we stand alert and read with our sharpest and most wakeful attention.

I believe that, having learned our letters, we should read the finest literature, not spend our lives repeating basic words and simple syllables as children do, sitting on the lowest bench in metaphorical school forever. Most people are satisfied if they read, or hear read, and perhaps are challenged by, the wisdom of a single good book—like the Bible—and then spend the rest of their lives in mental stagnation, consuming what is called "easy reading." There’s a multi-volume set in our Circulating Library titled Little Reading, which I originally thought referred to a town I’d never visited. Some people, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest any quantity of this material, no matter how much they’ve consumed already—they waste nothing. If others are the machines producing such material, they are the machines consuming it. They read the nine-thousandth story about Zebulon and Sephronia, telling how they fell in love in a way no one ever has before, and how their true love’s course was anything but smooth—how it stumbled and recovered and continued. Or how some poor fellow climbs up a steeple when he never should have, and then, since the author put him up there so needlessly, rings the bell for the whole world to find out how on earth he gets down! Frankly, I think such aspiring heroes in novels should be turned into weathercocks, left spinning in the wind as stars were once named after mythic heroes—let them stay up there instead of coming down to bother honest folks with their antics. Next time the novelist rings the bell, I’m not budging, even if the meetinghouse burns down. "The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by the celebrated author of Tittle-Tol-Tan, to appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don’t all come together." This, too, they read with wide-eyed, childlike curiosity and unflagging appetite, like toddlers bent over a two-cent, gilt-edged copy of Cinderella—with no improvement in their reading or understanding. The result is dullness of mind, stagnation of the vital powers, and the gradual withering of all intellectual faculties. This kind of mental gingerbread is baked daily and with more dedication than honest bread in almost every oven, and has a ready market.

Even the best books are not truly read, even by so-called good readers. How much does our Concord culture really amount to? Aside from rare exceptions, there’s no taste for the best, or even very good, books here—even in English literature, which everyone can read and spell. Even college-educated or so-called liberally educated men here and elsewhere actually have little or no real familiarity with English classics; and regarding the recorded wisdom of humanity—the ancient classics and scriptures available to anyone willing—there is hardly any effort at all to truly know them. I know a woodchopper, middle-aged, who takes a French paper—not for news, he says (he doesn’t care for that)—but to "keep himself in practice," since he’s Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he thinks is the best thing he can do with his life, he says, besides that, it’s to "keep up and add to his English." That’s about all most college graduates do, and they take an English paper for the same reason. Read one of the best English books and try to find someone to discuss it with—there are few. Read a Greek or Latin classic in the original, which even so-called uneducated people know by name, and you'll find no one at all to talk with—you'll have to keep silent. In fact, hardly any professor in our colleges, even if he has mastered the language, has equally engaged with the wit and poetry of a Greek poet or can share any enthusiasm with the alert and brave reader; and as for the sacred scriptures of the world—who here can even name their titles? Most people don’t know any nation besides the Hebrews has ever had a scripture. Anyone would go out of their way to pick up a silver dollar, but here are golden words spoken by the wisest across the ages—and yet we barely learn to read beyond easy primers and children’s storybooks, and our reading, conversation, and thinking remain on a poor, childish level.

I want to be acquainted with wiser people than our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or should I know of Plato, yet never read his works? As though Plato lived next door but I never listened to him—not once absorbing his wisdom, though his Dialogues, containing all that was immortal in him, sit just one shelf away, unread. In this, I admit, I see little difference between the illiteracy of the man who cannot read and the one who has learned to read only childish tales. We should strive to equal the great figures of the past, but we can only do that by first knowing just how great they truly were. We are a race of small minds and barely rise above the news columns in our intellectual pursuits.

Not all books are as dull as their readers. There are words written that speak directly to our situation; if we could really hear and understand them, they’d be more life-giving than morning or spring, and might even change our view of everything. Many have traced the start of a new era in life to reading a book. There’s likely a book out there that could explain—and even renew—our miracles. The questions that disturb and baffle us have troubled all the wise, and not one has missed them, and each has answered as best as he could, by word and deed. With wisdom, we also find generosity. That solitary farmhand on the outskirts of Concord, who has had a religious awakening and lives in isolation and gravity by his beliefs, may think otherwise; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, walked the same path and had the same experience; but being wise, he saw it was universal, treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even credited with inventing worship among men. Let that man, then, commune with Zoroaster, and through the broadening influence of all the great ones, with Jesus Christ himself, and let "our church" fall by the wayside.

We boast about living in the nineteenth century and advancing faster than any other nation. But look how little this village does for its own culture. I do not want to flatter or be flattered by my fellow citizens—it wouldn’t help either of us. We need to be challenged—driven like cattle into a trot. We have a fairly good system of common schools, really just schools for children; but except for the nearly starving Lyceum in winter and the recent weak effort at a library, we have no school for adults. We spend more on almost any item for bodily health or pleasure than on what feeds our minds. It’s time we had uncommon schools, and didn’t stop our education once we become adults. Villages should be like universities, their older inhabitants scholars, free—if they are as comfortable as they claim—to pursue serious study all their lives. Why should all the world’s knowledge be confined to one Paris or Oxford? Can’t students board here and get a liberal education under Concord’s sky? Can we not invite someone like Abelard to come lecture? But tending cattle and running shops keeps us from learning too much, and our education is sorely neglected. Here, the village ought to be the equivalent of the European nobleman: a patron of the arts. The town is rich enough, but lacks generosity and refinement. It spends money without hesitation on things important to farmers and traders, but as soon as spending on higher things for education is suggested, it's considered impractical—even though wiser people know they are far more valuable. This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars for a town-house (thanks to fortune or politics), yet will likely spend far less for living wit—true substance—over the next hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars given annually for a winter Lyceum is the best use of money in town. If we live in the nineteenth century, why not make use of its advantages? Why live provincially? If we must read newspapers, why not skip the Boston gossip and go straight for the world’s best?—why rely on "neutral family" papers or graze on "Olive-Branches" here in New England? Let reports from all learned societies come to us and test their value. Why let Harper & Brothers or Redding & Co. pick our reading? As a cultivated nobleman surrounds himself with whatever promotes his growth—intellect, learning, wit, books, art, music, science instruments—shouldn't the village do the same, not settle for a teacher, a preacher, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, just because our pilgrim ancestors managed to survive a harsh winter with those? Acting collectively fits the spirit of our institutions, and I’m sure our resources surpass those of any nobleman. New England could afford to bring in all the world’s wise instructors and house them, and not be provincial at all. That’s the *uncommon* school we should have. Instead of noblemen, let’s have noble towns of men. If need be, omit one bridge over the river—make a small detour—and instead build an arch over the deeper gulf of our ignorance.

## Sounds

Yet, while we are confined even to the finest books and particular written languages—provincial dialects themselves—we risk forgetting the universal language of things and events themselves, which alone is truly rich and authoritative. Much is published; little is genuinely printed. The light streaming through a shutter means nothing if the shutter is removed and the whole view let in. No method or discipline can remove the necessity of remaining always alert. What is a course in history, philosophy, or poetry, regardless of quality, or the best society or routines of life, compared to the practice of always looking about for what there is to truly see? Will you be just a reader, just a student, or a seer? Read your fate, take in what’s before you, and move forward into the future.

I didn’t spend the first summer reading books; I hoed beans. In fact, I often did better than that. Sometimes I couldn’t justify sacrificing the freshness of the present moment for any work, mental or physical. I love leaving a wide margin to my life. Sometimes, on a summer morning after my usual bath, I would sit in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, lost in thought among the pines and hickories and sumacs, in complete solitude and stillness, while the birds sang or quietly flitted through the house, until the sun shining in my west window or the sound of a wagon on the far highway reminded me how much time had passed. I grew during those times like corn at night; those hours did me more good than any work of the hands could. They weren’t taken away from my life, but added above and beyond my usual share. I understood what the Easterners mean by contemplation and leaving off one’s works. Most of the time, I didn’t notice how the hours went by. The day moved along as if for the sake of my own work; it was morning—then, suddenly, evening, with nothing memorable accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I just smiled quietly at my own steady good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so I had my chuckle or suppressed song for him to hear from my own nest. My days were not named after heathen gods, divided into little pieces and tortured by a clock’s ticking; I lived like the Puri Indians, who have only one word for yesterday, today, and tomorrow, conveying meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for tomorrow, and overhead for today. To my neighbors, this was sheer idleness; but had the birds and flowers judged me, I think I would have passed. A man must find his purpose within himself, that’s true. The day itself is calm and will hardly judge a man’s laziness.

At least I had this advantage in the way I lived, over those who need external amusements like society or the theater: my life itself was the entertainment, and never stopped being fresh. It was a never-ending, many-acted drama. If we truly lived for making progress and ran our lives by the best methods we’ve learned, we would never be troubled by ennui. Follow your genius closely, and it will always reveal something new. Even housework was enjoyable for me. When my floor was dirty, I’d get up early, put all my belongings outside on the grass—bed and bedstead in one bundle—splash water on the floor, sprinkle white sand collected from the pond, and scrub the floor with a broom until it was clean and white. By the time the neighbors had finished breakfast, the sun had dried my house enough for me to move back in, with little interruption to my meditations. It was pleasant to see all my furniture out on the grass like a gypsy’s pack, with my three-legged table—books, pen, and ink still on it—standing among the pines and hickories. The things seemed glad to get out, and reluctant to come back in. Sometimes I wanted to put an awning over them and sit there myself. It was worth it to see the sunlight and wind on such ordinary objects; they always look more interesting outdoors. A bird on a branch nearby, life-everlasting plants under the table, blackberry vines winding around its legs, pinecones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves all around. It looked as though our indoor furniture was inspired by these objects because they once stood outside among them.

My house was on the side of a hill, at the edge of a larger forest, among a young growth of pitch pines and hickories, about six rods from the pond, with a narrow footpath leading down. In my yard grew strawberry, blackberry, life-everlasting, johnswort, goldenrod, shrub-oaks, sand-cherry, blueberry, and groundnut. In late May, the sand-cherry (*Cerasus pumila*) lined the path with its delicate flowers, arranged like little bouquets around its short stems, which in autumn, heavy with cherries, fell over in wreaths like sun rays. I tasted them out of respect for Nature, though they were barely edible. Sumac (*Rhus glabra*) grew thickly around the house, sometimes pushing through the earthworks I’d built, growing five or six feet the first year. Its large, tropical-looking leaves were lovely, though unfamiliar. The big buds, shooting out quickly in late spring from what looked like dead sticks, suddenly became graceful green branches, sometimes an inch thick; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did they grow that I would hear a fresh bough snap and fall, just under its own weight, without a breath of wind. In August, the big clusters of berries—after attracting many wild bees in bloom—turned a deep, velvety crimson and dragged the branches down with their weight, breaking more limbs.

As I sit at my window on this summer afternoon, hawks circle over my clearing; wild pigeons, in twos and threes, fly past or perch on pine boughs behind my house, giving the air a voice; a fishhawk makes ripples on the pond and catches a fish; a mink slips from the marsh and grabs a frog by the shore; the sedges bend under the weight of reed-birds darting around; and for the past half hour I’ve heard the clatter of railroad cars, fading and reappearing like a partridge’s drum, as travelers pass from Boston out to the country. I was not so removed from the world as the boy who, they say, was sent to a farmer in the east end of town, but soon ran away because he found it so dull and deserted—even the train whistle couldn’t be heard! I doubt such a place exists anywhere in Massachusetts now:

"In truth, our village has become a target  
For one of those swift railroad arrows, and over  
Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is—Concord."

The Fitchburg Railroad runs along the pond about a hundred rods south of my home. I usually walk to the village along its causeway and am, in a sense, connected to society by that link. The men on the freight trains, who travel the whole line, bow to me like an old friend—they pass so often, and apparently think I’m one of their own employees; and in a sense, I am. I wouldn’t mind being a track worker somewhere along Earth’s path.

The locomotive’s whistle echoes through my woods in all seasons, like the scream of a hawk over a farmer’s yard, letting me know that restless city merchants are arriving or that adventurous rural traders are coming in from the countryside. As they enter one edge of town, they blast a warning to clear the track for the next. “Here come your groceries, country! Here are your rations, countrymen!” No farmer can say no. “And here’s your pay for them!” shouts the countryman’s own whistle. Timber, like great battering rams, rush into the city, and chairs enough for all the weary urban dwellers. With such massive civility, the country hands the city a chair. All the huckleberry hills are stripped, cranberry meadows raked bare, all for the town. Cotton travels in, cloth travels out; silk comes in, wool goes out; books arrive, but the wit that created them departs.

When I see the engine and its train moving like a planet—or, more accurately, a comet, whose orbit the observer cannot be certain will ever return, its direction unclear—its steam cloud, like a white banner trailing behind, shining golden and silver in the sun, resembling those high-downy clouds I see in the sky unfolding to the light—when I hear that iron horse shaking the hills with its thunderous “snort,” rattling the earth, breathing fire and smoke (who knows what sort of winged horse or dragon they’ll add to new mythology?)—at times it seems the earth has at last a race worthy to inhabit it. If only all were as it seems, and men made nature their servant for noble ends! If the cloud above the engine were the sweat of bold deeds, or as life-giving as a farmer’s rain cloud, the elements and Nature herself would gladly join people on their errands.

I watch the morning train the same as I do the sunrise; it’s just as regular. The trails of vapor left behind rise ever higher, as though heading to heaven while the cars go to Boston, briefly hiding the sun and casting a shadow on my distant field: a celestial train, compared to which the small train hugging the ground is just a spear tip. The engine’s caretaker was up early, by starlight in the mountains, feeding and hitching his iron horse. Fire, too, was up early to give it vital heat for the day. If only the business were as pure as it is early! When there’s deep snow, they strap on plows like giant snowshoes, carving a furrow from the mountains to the sea, in which the cars—like a farmer’s seed drill—scatter people and goods all across the land. All day the fire-steed races, stopping only when its driver must rest. I am awakened by its stamping and defiant snort at midnight, when, somewhere in a snowy forest, it faces the elements, and only reaches its stable with the morning star, then heads out again without true rest. Sometimes, in the evening, I hear its great sigh as it lets off steam from a day’s work to relax for a bit of iron sleep. If only the business were as admirable as it is tireless and persistent!

Across seldom-traveled woods and the borders of towns—where only hunters once ventured by day—these bright train-cars now speed in deepest night, their passengers unaware; one moment stopping at a bustling city station, the next in a haunted swamp, startling foxes and owls. The train’s comings and goings now mark time in the village; they keep such punctual schedules, their whistle heard so far away that farmers even set their clocks by them, so that this single well-run institution keeps the whole region on schedule. Have people not improved their punctuality since the railroad came? Don’t they think and talk faster in the depot than they did in the old stageoffice? The place is electrifying. I’m amazed at the changes it brings—how even neighbors I’d never think would be prompt for the Boston train are there in time when the bell rings. “Railroad fashion” is the new saying; it’s good to be directly and forcefully told to clear the tracks! There’s no pausing for any old warnings—no shooting over our heads as in the old days. We've created a fate—an *Atropos*—that never swerves. (Let that be your engine’s name.) Everyone knows exactly when these bolts will be shot toward particular compass points; yet it interrupts no man’s business, and even children cross safely. We all live more steadily because of it. In a way, we’re all trained to become like Tell’s sons—children of precision and aim. The air is full of invisible arrows. Every path but your own is the road of fate. So keep to your own track.

What attracts me to commerce is its spirit of enterprise and bravery. It does not stand idly by, hands clasped, praying to Jupiter. I see these men every day going about their business with some degree of courage and contentment, accomplishing more than they realize and perhaps being better employed than they could consciously have planned. I am less impressed by the heroism of those who stood their ground in the front line at Buena Vista for half an hour than by the steady, cheerful courage of the men who spend their winters inside the snow-plough; who have not only the “three o’clock in the morning courage” that Bonaparte called the rarest, but whose bravery stays wide awake, who only sleep when the storm itself sleeps or when the iron muscles of their engine are frozen. This morning, during the Great Snow—which still rages on, chilling men to the bone—I hear the muffled tone of their engine bell, sounding through the fog of their frosty breath, announcing that the cars *are coming*, undelayed despite the sternest New England northeast snowstorm, and I see the ploughmen covered in snow and frost, their heads poking above the moldboard, which is turning up more than just daisies and field-mice nests, looking like boulders of the Sierra Nevada, taking up an exposed position in the universe.

Commerce is surprisingly confident and calm—alert, adventurous, and tireless. Its methods are surprisingly natural, far more so than many fanciful experiments or sentimental ventures, and thus it often succeeds so well. I feel uplifted and invigorated when the freight train rattles by, carrying with it the distinct scents of goods traveling all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of distant lands, coral reefs, Indian oceans, tropical climates, and the globe’s vastness. Seeing the palm-leaf destined to shade so many New England heads next summer, the Manila hemp and coconut husks, the scrap iron, old junk, gunny bags, and rusty nails, I feel like a citizen of the world. This load of torn sails is more meaningful and interesting now than if made into paper and printed books. Who could write the storms they endured as vividly as these rents themselves do? They are proof sheets, needing no corrections. Here is lumber from the Maine woods that didn’t wash out to sea in the last flood, its price now up four dollars per thousand because of what was lost—pine, spruce, cedar—recently all of one kind, now sorted into first, second, third, and fourth qualities, once waving over the bear, moose, and caribou. Next comes Thomaston lime, a prime lot, bound for far hills before it will slacken. Here are rags in bales of all colors and types, the last humble stage for cotton and linen, the remnants of dress—fashions now forgotten except maybe in Milwaukee, patterns of English, French, or American prints, ginghams, muslins, &c., gathered from every corner of style and poverty, destined to become paper of just a few hues, on which, ironically, tales of real life, high and low, will be written and claimed as fact! This closed car reeks of salt fish, that strong, commercial New England smell, evoking the Grand Banks and the fisheries. Who hasn’t seen a salt fish, perfectly cured for this world, imperishable, outlasting even the perseverance of the saints? You could sweep the streets with it, pave with it, split kindling, or have a teamster shelter behind it, and, as one Concord trader once did, hang it by the door as a business sign until even his oldest customer couldn’t tell whether it was animal, vegetable, or mineral. Yet, it remains as unspoiled as a snowflake, and if thrown into a pot and boiled, turns into a fine dun fish for Saturday's dinner. Here come Spanish hides, tails still twisted and raised as they were when the oxen ran over the pampas of the Spanish Main—a symbol of all stubbornness and a reminder how deeply ingrained and almost impossible to cure any character flaws are. Speaking practically, when I understand a person's true nature, I don’t expect it to change for better or worse in this life. As the Orientals say, “A cur’s tail may be warmed, pressed, and bound for twelve years, yet it keeps its shape.” The one sure cure for such stubbornness is to turn these tails into glue—so they’ll stick, which is usually what happens. Here comes a hogshead of molasses or brandy addressed to John Smith, Cuttingsville, Vermont, a trader among the Green Mountains, who imports for the farmers near his clearing, now standing over his bulkhead, thinking about the latest coastal shipments and how they may impact his prices, telling his customers, as he has a score of times already that morning, to expect a new shipment soon. It’s advertised in the Cuttingsville Times.

As some goods go up, others come down. Warned by the whirring sound, I look up from my book to see a tall pine, hewn from distant northern hills, flying over the Green Mountains and the Connecticut, shooting like an arrow through the township within ten minutes, unnoticed by any other eye; soon to become

“the mast  
Of some great ammiral.”

And listen! Here comes the cattle-train, carrying herds from a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and barnyards in the air, drovers with their sticks and shepherd boys among their flocks—everything but the mountain pastures—whirled past like leaves blown down by September winds. The air is full of the bleating of calves and sheep and the bustle of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were rushing by. When the old bellwether in front rattles his bell, truly the mountains skip like rams and the hills like lambs. There’s also a car full of drovers, now level with their charges, their work already done, still holding onto their useless sticks. But their dogs—where are they? The whole thing is a stampede to them; they’re left far behind, out of scent. I fancy I hear them barking behind the Peterboro’ Hills, or panting up the western slopes of the Green Mountains. They won’t be there at the end. Their purpose, too, has passed. Their loyalty and cleverness are now undervalued. They will slink home in shame or perhaps run wild and make pacts with wolves and foxes. And so, your pastoral life is whisked away. But the bell rings, and I must step off the track to let the cars pass;—

What’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 won’t let my eyes be blinded or my ears spoiled by its smoke, steam, and noise.

Now that the cars have gone by and the restless world along with them, and the fish in the pond no longer feel their rumble, I am more alone than ever. For the rest of the long afternoon, only the occasional faint rattle of a wagon or a team along the distant highway might break my thoughts.

Sometimes, on Sundays, I’d hear bells from Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord, when the wind was right—a faint, sweet, and natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. Heard over the woods at the right distance, it takes on a vibrating hum, as if the pine needles at the horizon were the strings of a harp swept by the sound. Every sound, heard at the furthest possible distance, gives the same effect: a vibration of the world’s lyre, just as the atmosphere tints a far-off ridge blue. The sound became a melody that the air itself had filtered, carried to every leaf and needle in the forest, that part of the bell song the elements picked up, modulated, and echoed from valley to valley. The echo is partly a new sound, and that’s its magic. It’s not just a repetition of what’s worth repeating from the bell, but partly the voice of the woods themselves—the same simple words and notes sung by a woodland nymph.

In the evening, the distant lowing of a cow beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and at first I might mistake it for the voices of minstrels who sometimes serenaded me, wandering over the hills. But soon I realized, not unpleasantly, that it was just a cow’s natural music. I don’t mean this as satire, but as appreciation of those young men’s singing when I say I recognized that it blended with the cow’s music—they were, in the end, both voices of Nature.

Every night at half past seven, in part of the summer, after the evening train had passed, the whippoorwills sang their evening hymns for half an hour, perched on a stump by my door or on the ridgepole of my house. They’d start singing almost like clockwork, within five minutes of a certain time, set by the sun, every evening. I had a rare chance to study their habits. Sometimes I heard four or five together in the woods, a note or so apart, so near me I could pick out not only the cluck after each note but even that strange buzzing, like a loud fly caught in a web. Sometimes one would circle around me just a few feet away, as if tethered, likely because I was near its eggs. They sang off and on through the night, and were again as musical as ever just before dawn.

When other birds fell silent the screech-owls took up the tune, like ancient mourning women with their eerie u-lu-lu. Their mournful cry is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise midnight hags! It is not the straightforward tu-whit tu-who the poets describe, but rather an earnest and deeply solemn graveyard song—the mutual laments of doomed lovers remembering supernal passions in infernal groves. Still, I love to hear their wails, their sad replies echoing through the woods—sometimes musical, like the shadowy side of song, the regrets and sighs that wish to be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and troubled forebodings of fallen souls, who once walked the earth by night and did dark deeds, now atoning with their wailing hymns among the scenes where they sinned. They reveal to me a new sense of the variety and vastness of our shared world. *Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!* sighs one from this side of the pond, circling restlessly to a new perch in the gray oaks. Then—*that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!* answers another from across the pond, trembling with sincerity, and—*bor-r-r-r-n!* echoes faintly from deep in the Lincoln woods.

And I was serenaded by a hooting owl as well. Up close, you could mistake it for the saddest sound in Nature, as if Nature meant to preserve the dying moans of a person in her chorus—some poor soul leaving hope behind and howling like an animal, yet with human sobs, crossing into darkness, made all the more chilling by a certain gurgling melody. I find myself wanting to start with the letters “gl” when I try to mimic it—reflecting a mind gone soft and moldy, beyond all healthy or brave thought. It reminded me of ghouls and mad howlings. But from far away, another responds with a song transformed by distance—*Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo*—and generally, the owl’s call often brings only pleasing feelings, day or night, winter or summer.

I am glad we have owls. Let them do the maniacal hooting for us. The sound suits swamps and twilight woods, places unlit by day, suggesting a vast, unknown nature that people have yet to recognize. They represent the twilight and restless thoughts we all experience. All day the sun shines over a wild swamp, where a lone spruce is hung with lichens, small hawks circle, and chickadees whisper among the evergreens, while the partridge and rabbit keep to the shadows; but now, at night, a new, fitting day begins, awakening a different race to express Nature’s meaning there.

Late at night I’d hear the distant rumble of wagons over bridges, a sound that carries farther than almost any other, the baying of dogs, and sometimes the distant low of a lonely cow in some far barnyard. Meanwhile, all around the shore the bullfrogs trumpeted—the hearty spirits of old wine-bibbers and revelers, still unrepentant, trying to sing an old song in their Stygian lake—if the Walden nymphs will forgive the comparison, since there are almost no weeds, but definitely frogs—still trying to relive the fun of their old drinking parties, now with voices grown hoarse and grave, mocking any joy, the wine long since gone flat, now just water to bloat their bellies, intoxication replaced by mere saturation and swelling. The most venerable of them, chin on a heart-leaf he uses as a napkin, quaffs the once-despised water under the northern shore and leads the toast—*tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk!* Soon, across the water from a distant cove, the same word is echoed; the next in size and age has taken his turn. When the ritual has passed all the way around the pond, the master of ceremonies calls out, satisfied, *tr-r-r-oonk!* and each frog repeats in order, down to the smallest, leakiest, and flabbiest, so there’s no mistake; then the bowl goes round again and again until sunrise clears the mist, and only the old patriarch remains above water, bellowing *troonk* from time to time, waiting for a reply.

I don’t think I ever heard a rooster’s crow from my home, and I even thought it might be worthwhile to keep a cockerel just for his song, as you would a singing bird. The note of this formerly wild Indian pheasant is truly remarkable, and if it could become naturalized here without being tamed, it would soon become the most famous bird call in our woods, outshining the goose’s honk and the owl’s hoot; and imagine hen cackles filling the pauses between the cock’s calls! No wonder people domesticated this bird—not to mention eggs and drumsticks. Imagine walking on a winter morning through woods full of these birds, hearing wild cocks crowing from the trees, so clear and loud for miles that they drown out every other bird—what an awakening! It would inspire whole nations to rise early, earlier each day, till everyone became unbelievably healthy, wealthy, and wise. Poets from every land have celebrated this foreign bird’s cry alongside their own songbirds. All climates suit brave Chanticleer. He’s more at home than even the locals. His health is always good, his lungs strong, his spirits never low. Even sailors crossing Atlantic and Pacific are awakened by his voice—but that sharp note never woke me from sleep. I kept no dog, cat, cow, pig, or hens—so you’d say I lacked all domestic sounds: not the churn, nor the spinning wheel, nor even the singing kettle, nor the hissing urn, nor children crying for comfort. An old-fashioned person might have lost his mind or died of boredom here. There weren’t even rats in the walls—they were starved out, or more likely never tempted in—just squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whippoorwill on the ridgepole, a blue jay screaming just outside the window, a hare or woodchuck beneath the house, a screech or horned owl behind, a flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox barking in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole—gentle southern birds—visited my clearing. No cockerel crowing, no hens cackling in the yard. No yard at all; only unfenced Nature at my doorstep. Young forest sprouting beneath your meadows, wild sumacs and blackberries breaking into your cellar; stubborn pitch pines scraping the shingles for lack of space, their roots stretching under the house itself. Instead of a scuttle or shutter blown off by a storm, you get a pine tree snapped off or uprooted for firewood behind your house. Instead of losing your path to the front yard in a Great Snow—there’s no gate, no front yard, and no path to the civilized world!

## Solitude

This is a delightful evening, when my whole body feels like one sense, absorbing pleasure through every pore. I walk back and forth with a peculiar freedom in Nature, as if I am a part of her. As I stroll along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves—even though it is cool, cloudy, and windy, and there seems nothing in particular to draw my attention—all the elements feel especially harmonious to me. The bullfrogs sound their trumpets to welcome the night, and the whippoorwill’s call floats across the water on the breeze. My sympathy with the trembling alder and poplar leaves nearly takes my breath away; yet, like the lake, my calmness is only rippled—not disturbed. These gentle waves stirred by the evening wind are as distant from a storm as the smooth, reflecting surface itself. Though it is now dark, the wind continues to blow and roar through the woods, the waves keep crashing, and some creatures lull others with their calls. The stillness is never complete. The wildest animals don’t rest, but now seek their prey; the fox, skunk, and rabbit roam the fields and woods without worry. They are Nature's watchmen—links that connect the days of living things.

When I return to my house, I often find that visitors have been there and left their calling cards: perhaps a bunch of flowers, a wreath of evergreen, or a name written in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a wood chip. Those who rarely visit the woods tend to pick up some little piece of the forest to play with as they walk, which they then leave behind—either on purpose or by accident. Someone has peeled a willow branch, woven it into a ring, and left it on my table. I can always tell if I have had visitors in my absence—by the bent twigs or grass, or the footprints they leave behind, and usually I can tell their sex, age, or kind by some slight trace—a dropped flower, a bunch of grass that has been picked and tossed away, even as far as the railroad, half a mile away, or by the lingering scent of a cigar or pipe. I was often alerted to a traveler passing along the highway sixty rods away just from the smell of his pipe.

Generally, there is enough space around us. Our horizon is never completely at our elbows. The thick woods or the pond are not right at our door; there is always some bit of space that is familiar and worn by our use, claimed and fenced off, somehow recovered from Nature. Why do I have this enormous range and circuit, several square miles of seldom-traveled forest left entirely for my privacy, abandoned to me by others? My nearest neighbor is a mile away, and no house is visible from any place except the hilltops within half a mile of my own. My horizon is surrounded by woods that are all mine—a distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on one side, and the fence that skirts the woodland road on the other. But mostly, where I live is as solitary as the prairies. It might as well be Asia or Africa as New England. I have, in a way, my own sun and moon and stars, and a small world of my own. At night, no traveler would ever pass my house or knock at my door, as if I were the first or last person alive—unless it was spring, when only occasionally someone would come from the village to fish for pouts—they always seemed to fish more in the Walden Pond of their own souls, baiting their hooks with darkness—but they soon retreated, usually with empty baskets, and left “the world to darkness and to me,” and the silent core of the night was never disturbed by any human neighbor. I believe people are still a little afraid of the dark, even though the witches are all gone, and both Christianity and candles have been introduced.

Yet, I sometimes found that the sweetest, kindest, most innocent, and encouraging companionship can be found in any natural object, even for someone who feels misanthropic or melancholy. There can be no truly deep sadness for someone who lives surrounded by Nature and still has their senses. There has never been a storm that wasn’t music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightfully force a simple and brave person into a base sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons, I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain that waters my beans and keeps me inside today isn’t dreary or sad, but is good for me as well. Though it stops me from hoeing them, it is of much more value than my tending. Even if it should last so long that it causes the seeds to rot in the ground and ruins the potatoes in the lowlands, it would still help the grass on the uplands, and being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, comparing myself to others, I feel as if the gods have favored me more than them—beyond any merit I am aware of—as if I am specially warranted and protected, and am guided and guarded in a way my fellows are not. I do not flatter myself—but if it is possible, they flatter me. I have never felt lonely, or the slightest sense of solitude, except once—and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when for an hour I doubted if closeness to other people wasn't essential for a peaceful and healthy life. To be alone seemed somewhat unpleasant. But even then I was aware of a certain craziness in my mood and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the middle of a gentle rain while these thoughts reigned, I suddenly felt such sweet and generous companionship in Nature—in the patter of the drops, in every sight and sound around my house, an infinite, mysterious friendliness, like an atmosphere supporting me—that made the supposed benefits of human neighborhood seem small, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I became keenly aware of something kindred to myself present—even in scenes we usually call wild and dreary—and also that the relative closest to me wasn’t a person or a villager, which made me think no place could ever feel strange to me again.—

“Mourning untimely consumes the sad;  
Few are their days in the land of the living,  
Beautiful daughter of Toscar.”

Some of my best hours happened during the long rain storms of spring or fall, which kept me in the house all day, comforted by their constant roar and pounding. An early twilight would usher in a long evening during which many thoughts could take root and grow. During those north-east storms that so tested the village houses—when maids stood ready with mop and pail in entryways to keep the flood out—I sat behind my door in my little house, which was nothing but an entryway, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunderstorm, lightning struck a tall pitch-pine across the pond, leaving a very clear and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep and four or five inches wide, just as one would carve a walking stick. I walked by it again the other day and was filled with awe seeing that mark, now clearer than ever, where a terrible and irresistible bolt came down out of the innocent sky eight years before. Men often say to me, “I should think you would feel lonely out there, and wish to be closer to people, especially on rainy or snowy days and nights.” I am tempted to reply—This entire earth we live on is just a point in space. How far apart, do you suppose, are the two most distant inhabitants of that star over there, whose size is beyond our instruments’ ability to measure? Why should I feel lonely? Isn't our planet in the Milky Way? What you ask seems to me not the most important question. What kind of space separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I’ve found that no amount of walking can bring two minds truly closer together. What do we most want to live near? Not a crowd, not the train depot, or the post office, or the bar, or the church, or the school, or the grocery, or Beacon Hill, or Five Points, where people gather, but to the lasting source of our lives—from which, in all our experience, things arise, as the willow stands near water and grows its roots in that direction. This place will be different for different people, but it is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar…. One evening I caught up to one of my townsmen on the Walden road—he is thought to have “a handsome property” (though I never saw much of it clearly)—driving a pair of cattle to market, who asked me how I could stand to give up so many comforts in life. I answered that I knew I liked it quite well; I wasn't joking. Then I went home to my bed and left him to make his way through the dark and mud to Brighton—or Bright-town—which he would reach sometime in the morning.

Any prospect of being awakened, or coming alive, is enough to make all places and times equally unimportant. The place where that may happen is always the same, and extremely enjoyable to all our senses. Usually, we let only outward and passing circumstances shape our experiences. In fact, they are what distract us. Closest to everything is the power that creates them. *Next* to us, the greatest laws are always being carried out. *Next* to us is not the hired worker we like to talk to, but the worker whose work we ourselves are.

“How vast and profound is the influence of the subtle powers of Heaven and Earth!”

“We try to see them and we cannot; we try to hear them and we do not; being one with the essence of things, they cannot be separated from them.”

“They cause, everywhere in the universe, people to purify and sanctify their hearts, and to put on their best clothes to make sacrifices and offerings to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtle intelligences. They are everywhere—above us, to our left, to our right; surrounding us on all sides.”

We are the subjects of an experiment that I find very interesting. Can't we do without our usual gossip for a while—have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius rightly said, “Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must, of necessity, have neighbors.”

With thought, we can be “beside ourselves” in a sane way. Through conscious effort, we can stand apart from our actions and their results; all things, good and bad, pass us by like a rushing stream. We are not completely part of Nature. I might be the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I *may* be moved by a play; or I *may not* be moved by a real event that seems much more relevant to me. I only know myself as a human being—the setting, so to speak, of thoughts and feelings—and I sense a kind of doubleness, by which I can stand off from myself as much as from another person. No matter how intense my experience, I am aware of the presence and critique of another part of me, which seems not truly mine but a spectator, sharing no experience but observing it—and that part is no more me than it is you. When the play—perhaps the tragedy—of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was something imagined, a kind of fiction, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends at times.

I find it healthy to be alone for most of the time. Even the best company soon becomes tiring and distracting. I love to be alone. I have never found a companion as companionable as solitude. For the most part, we are more lonely when among people than when we’re by ourselves. A man who is thinking or working is always alone, wherever he may be. Solitude is not measured by the miles that separate a man from others. The truly focused student at crowded Cambridge College is as solitary as a hermit in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or woods all day, busy hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonely because he is occupied; but when he comes home at night, he can’t sit in a room by himself, at the mercy of his own thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks” and relax, and as he thinks, make up for the day’s solitude; and so he wonders how the student can sit alone indoors all night and most of the day without becoming bored or sad. But he does not realize that the student, though at home, is still at work in *his* field and chopping in *his* woods, just as the farmer is in his own, and in turn seeks the same pleasure and society as the farmer does, though it might be in a more concentrated form.

Society is usually too cheap. We meet too frequently, not having enough time to gain new value for each other. We gather at meals three times a day and give each other another taste of that old, stale cheese we are. We have to agree on a set of rules—called etiquette and politeness—to make such frequent meetings bearable, so we do not come to open conflict. We meet at the post office, at social gatherings, and by the fireside every night; we live crowded together, getting in each other’s way and stumbling over one another, and I think, by doing so, we lose some respect for each other. Certainly, less frequent meetings would be enough for all important and heartfelt communication. Think of the girls in a factory—never alone, barely even in their dreams. It would be better if there were only one inhabitant for every square mile, as where I live. The value of a person is not in their skin, that we feel the need to touch them.

I heard of a man lost in the woods who died of hunger and exhaustion at the base of a tree, whose loneliness was eased by the strange visions that, due to his weakness, his sick imagination created, and which he believed were real. The same way, thanks to our physical and mental health and strength, we may be constantly cheered by a similar, but healthier and more natural, kind of companionship, and come to realize that we are never truly alone.

I get a lot of company in my house; especially in the morning, when there are no visitors. Let me offer a few comparisons, in hopes that someone can really picture my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon on the pond that laughs so loudly, or Walden Pond itself. What company does that lonely lake have, I ask you? And yet, it does not have the blue devils, but blue angels in its waters, in their azure tint. The sun is alone—except in thick weather, when a second, a mock sun, may appear. God is alone—but the devil is certainly not; he keeps plenty of company—he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a field, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horsefly, or bumblebee. I am no more lonely than Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the North Star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.

I have occasional visits on the long winter evenings, when snow falls thick and the wind howls in the woods, from an old settler and original landowner, who is said to have dug Walden Pond, stoned it, and surrounded it with pine woods. He tells me stories of ancient times and of eternity; together, we spend cheerful evenings with friendly laughter and pleasant perspectives, even without apples or cider—a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love dearly, and who keeps himself more secret than Goffe or Whalley ever did: though thought to be dead, no one can show where he is buried. There is also an elderly lady who lives in my neighborhood, invisible to most, in whose fragrant herb garden I like to wander, picking healing plants and listening to her stories; she has a genius for invention, and her memory stretches back before mythology—she can describe the origin of every fable, and the real events behind each, for they happened when she was young. She is a hearty and thriving old woman, who delights in every kind of weather and season, and is likely to outlive all her children.

The indescribable innocence and kindness of Nature—of sun, wind, and rain, of summer and winter—such health and cheer they always give! And such sympathy have they always shown to our race, that if any person should grieve for a just cause, all Nature would be affected: the sun’s brightness would dim, the winds would sigh, the clouds would weep, and the woods would drop their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer. Shouldn’t I have understanding with the earth? Am I not partly made of leaves and vegetable soil myself?

What is the pill that will keep us healthy, calm, and content? Not my or your great-grandfather’s pill, but Nature’s own universal, botanical medicines, with which she has always kept herself young, outlived many an old Parr in her day, and nourished her own health on their decaying remains. For my panacea, instead of one of those dubious vials of mixtures scooped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which are sold from those long, black-schooner-like wagons designed to carry bottles, let me have a draft of pure morning air. Morning air! If people will not drink this from the source at the start of the day, then perhaps we must bottle it and sell it in stores for those who have lost their subscription to the morning in this life. But remember, it won’t keep until noon even in the coolest cellar—the stoppers will burst long before that, following westward the steps of Aurora. I am not a worshipper of Hygeia, daughter of the old herbalist Æsculapius, often depicted on monuments holding a serpent in one hand and a cup in the other (sometimes with the serpent drinking from it); but rather of Hebe, cupbearer to Jupiter, daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, who had the power to restore both gods and men to youthful vigor. She was probably the only truly sound, healthy, and robust young woman who ever walked the earth, and wherever she appeared, it was spring.

## Visitors

I think I enjoy company as much as most people and am quite willing to attach myself, like a leech, to any lively person who comes my way. I am not naturally a hermit, though I could probably outlast the most persistent regular of the bar-room, if my business led me there.

I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When guests came in greater or unexpected numbers, only the third chair awaited them all, but they usually saved space by standing. It’s surprising how many notable men and women a small house can contain. I’ve had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, under my roof at once, and yet we often parted without realizing how close we’d been. Many of our public and private houses, with their countless rooms, huge halls, and expansive cellars for wine and other peaceful provisions, seem far too large for their inhabitants. They are so vast and grand that those living there appear almost like vermin infesting them. I’m always surprised when the herald blows his trumpet before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, and out onto the piazza creeps nothing but a ridiculous mouse, soon slipping back into a crack in the pavement.

One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in such a small house was the challenge of getting far enough away from my guest when we began to express lofty thoughts in grand words. You want enough space for your thoughts to get into full sail and travel a bit before coming to port. The trajectory of your thought must have settled into its last, steady course before reaching the listener’s ear, or else it may burst back out the side of his head. Likewise, our sentences wanted space to unfold and marshal themselves. People, like nations, require proper, broad, natural boundaries, even a generous neutral zone, between them. I found it a special pleasure to converse across the pond with someone on the opposite shore. In my house, we were so near we could not truly hear—we couldn’t speak softly enough to be heard, like two stones tossed into calm water so close their ripples cancel each other out. If we’re just chatty and loud, then we can stand close together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other’s breath; but if we speak thoughtfully and reservedly, we want to be farther apart, so that all animal heat and moisture can evaporate between us. If we want to enjoy the most intimate company with that part of ourselves which is beyond words, we must not only be silent, but often so physically separated that hearing each other's voice is impossible. By this standard, speech is for the hard of hearing; but there are many fine things we cannot say if we have to shout. As conversation grew more elevated and profound, we would instinctively move our chairs farther apart, until they touched the walls in opposite corners; even then, sometimes there wasn’t room enough.

My “best” room, my parlor for receiving guests, always ready for company, where the sun rarely fell, was the pine woods behind my house. During summer days with distinguished guests, I took them there, and a priceless domestic staff swept the floor and dusted the furniture, keeping everything in order.

If a single guest arrived, he sometimes shared my simple meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to be stirring hasty-pudding or watching a loaf of bread bake in the ashes. But if twenty guests filled my house, there was no mention of dinner, even though there might be bread enough for two—as if eating were an abandoned habit—and we naturally practiced abstinence. This was never seen as inhospitable, but as the most proper and considerate approach. The wear and tear of physical life, usually in need of repair, seemed miraculously slowed, and vital energy endured. I could thus host a thousand as well as twenty; and if any ever left my home hungry or disappointed, finding me at home, they can be sure I shared their feelings, at least. It is quite easy, contrary to the doubts of many housekeepers, to establish new and better customs in place of the old. Your reputation need not hinge on the dinners you provide. For my own part, no type of "Cerberus" ever kept me away from a man’s house as effectively as being fussed over for dining, which I took as a polite but clear hint not to visit again. I doubt I’ll ever return to such places. I would be proud to have as the motto of my cabin lines from Spenser, written by one visitor on a yellow walnut leaf as a card:—

“Arrived there, the little house they fill,  
    Nor look for entertainment where none was;  
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will:  
    The noblest mind the best contentment has.”

When Winslow, later governor of Plymouth Colony, visited Massasoit with a companion—on foot through the woods, arriving tired and hungry at the king’s lodge—they were warmly welcomed, but no mention was made of food that day. When night came, as they described it—“He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at one end and we at the other, it being only planks laid a foot from the ground, with a thin mat over them. Two more of his chief men, for lack of space, pressed by and upon us, so that we were more weary from our lodging than our journey.” Then at one o’clock the next day Massasoit “brought two fishes that he had shot,” about three times bigger than a bream; “these being boiled, there were at least forty expecting a share. Most ate of them. This was all the food we ate in two nights and a day; had one of us not bought a partridge, we would have gone on fasting.” Fearing they’d become faint from lack of food and sleep, due to “the savages’ barbarous singing (for they used to sing themselves to sleep),” they left, hoping to get home while they still had strength. While their lodging was poor, which they found uncomfortable (though it was likely meant as an honor), as for food, the Indians could do no better; they had none themselves, and wisely made no apologies. They just tightened their belts and said nothing. Another time, when Winslow visited during a time of plenty, there was no lack.

As for people, one rarely misses for company. I had more visitors living in the woods than at any other time in my life; that is, I had some. I met several there under better circumstances than anywhere else. But fewer came for trivial purposes—my distance from town naturally filtered my company. I had gone so deep into the solitude where the rivers of society empty, that for my purposes, only the finest sediment settled around me. Additionally, signs reached me of unexplored and unclaimed lands across the way.

Who should come to my cabin this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man—he had such a fitting and poetic name I regret I cannot record it here—a Canadian, woodchopper, and post-maker, who could hole fifty posts a day and made his last supper from a woodchuck caught by his dog. He, too, has heard of Homer, and said, “if it were not for books,” he “wouldn’t know what to do on rainy days,” though he probably hasn’t read one through in many seasons. Some priest who could read Greek taught him to read the Testament in his home parish far off; now I must translate for him, while he holds the book, Achilles’ words to Patroclus for his sorrowful face: “Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?”

“Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia? They say that Menœtius lives yet, son of Actor, And Peleus lives, son of Æacus, among the Myrmidons, Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve.”

He says, “That’s good.” He carries a bundle of white-oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morning. “I suppose there’s no harm in getting such a thing today,” he says. To him, Homer was a great writer, though he admitted he didn’t know what he wrote about. He was one of the simplest and most natural men imaginable. Vice and disease—those that cast a dark moral shadow over the world—seemed almost non-existent to him. About twenty-eight, he had left Canada and his father’s home a dozen years earlier to work in the States and save for a farm, perhaps in his homeland. He was sturdy and strong, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and sleepy blue eyes that occasionally sparkled. He wore a flat gray cap, a dingy wool-colored coat, and cowhide boots. A big eater, he usually took his lunch in a tin pail—often cold meats, woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle swung from his belt; sometimes he offered me a drink. He would cross my bean field early, in no hurry compared to anxious Yankees—he wasn’t about to overwork. He didn’t care if he only earned his board. If his dog caught a woodchuck on the way, he’d hide his lunch in the bushes, go back a mile and a half to prepare the animal and leave it in the cellar where he boarded, pondering whether he couldn’t just sink it in the pond till night—lingering fondly on such decisions. Passing by in the morning, he’d say, “How thick the pigeons are! If working every day weren’t my job, I could get all the meat I want just hunting—pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, partridges—by gosh! Enough for a week in one day.”

He was a skilled chopper, embellishing his work with flourishes. He cut trees close and level with the ground, for stronger sprouts and so sleds could pass easily; instead of leaving an entire trunk to support his cordwood, he’d shave it to a thin stake you could snap with your hand.

He drew my interest because he was so quiet, solitary, and yet so happy: a well of good humor that shone from his eyes. His mirth was pure. Sometimes I saw him felling trees in the woods; he’d greet me with infectious laughter and Canadian French, although he spoke English too. If I approached, he’d pause, lie on a felled pine, chew a ball of bark, and laugh and talk with delight. His animal spirits ran so high he’d occasionally tumble to the ground, rolling in laughter at whatever amused him. Glancing at the woods, he'd exclaim, “By George! I can enjoy myself well enough here chopping; I want no better sport.” Sometimes, when free, he passed whole days in the woods with a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself as he wandered. In winter, he kept a fire for warming his coffee at noon; and while he sat on a log to eat, chickadees sometimes landed on his arm, pecking potatoes from his fingers, and he said he “liked to have the little fellers around.”

In him, the physical, animal man was most developed. In stamina and contentment, he was kin to pine and rock. I once asked if he was ever tired at night after working all day; he answered sincerely, “Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life.” But his intellectual and “spiritual” side slumbered, much like an infant’s. He had been taught only in the mild, ineffectual way Catholic priests instruct the native peoples, rarely developing awareness, only trust and reverence—so he was kept a child, not made into a man. Nature gave him a strong body and contentment and supported him on every side with trust and reliance, for a simple, natural life. He was so straightforward and genuine that no introduction could introduce him, no more than if you presented your neighbor to a woodchuck. People just had to discover him as I did. He played no role. People paid him for work, which helped feed and clothe him; but he never traded opinions. He was naturally humble—if you can call someone humble who never aspires—for humility wasn’t a distinct trait in him, nor could he even imagine it. He held wiser men as demigods. If you said one was coming, he’d respond as if convinced that such greatness would expect nothing of him and would take all responsibility, leaving him still forgotten. He never sought or received praise. He especially respected writers and preachers—their accomplishments seemed like miracles. When I told him that I did a lot of writing, he thought, for a long time, I only meant handwriting, since he wrote well himself. Sometimes, I found his home parish’s name, elegantly written with the proper French accent, traced in the snow by the road—and knew he had passed by. I asked if he’d ever wanted to write his thoughts. He said he had read and written letters for those who could not, but as for writing thoughts—no, he could not do it, he wouldn’t know what to put first, it would burden him, and then there was spelling too!

I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer asked if he wanted the world to change; but he answered, with a surprised chuckle in his Canadian accent—not realizing the question had ever come up—“No, I like it well enough.” Conversation with him would have inspired any philosopher. To a stranger he seemed ignorant of everything; yet I sometimes saw in him a man I’d never seen before, and I couldn’t tell if he was wise as Shakespeare or simply naive as a child, whether he had poetic awareness or was just simple. A townsman told me that seeing him strolling through the village in his snug cap, whistling, he reminded him of a prince in disguise.

His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, in which he was skilled. The former was his encyclopedia, which he believed summarized all human knowledge—accurately, to a degree. I liked to question him about modern reforms, and he always offered the most practical, unvarnished view; he had never considered such matters before. Could he live without factories? He had worn homemade Vermont gray and liked it. Could he do without tea and coffee? Did this country have any drinks besides water? He’d soaked hemlock leaves in water and found that better than plain water in warm weather. When I asked if he could do without money, he explained the usefulness of money in a way that matched the most philosophical theories—and the very origin of the term *pecunia*. If he owned an ox and needed needles and thread at the store, it would be difficult to mortgage part of the ox each time. He could justify many institutions more convincingly than a philosopher; describing them as they affected him, he stated their real reasons for existing, unspoiled by speculation. Another time, upon hearing Plato’s definition of man—a featherless biped—and that someone had shown a plucked rooster as Plato’s man, he thought it was significant that the *knees* bent the opposite direction. Sometimes he’d declare, “How I love to talk! By George, I could talk all day!” I once asked, after not seeing him for months, if he’d gained a new idea that summer. “Good Lord,” he replied, “a man that has to work as I do, if he doesn’t forget the ideas he’s had, he’ll do well. Maybe the man you hoe with likes to race; then, by gorry, your mind’s on the weeds.” Sometimes he would ask me, on such occasions, if I had made any improvement. One winter day I asked if he was always satisfied with himself, attempting to suggest he look inward for his sense of purpose, rather than to a priest or outer motivation. “Satisfied!” he said. “Some men are satisfied with one thing, some with another. One man, if he’s got enough, might be content to sit all day with his back to the fire and his belly to the table, by George!” Yet however I tried, I could not move him to consider things spiritually; the highest view he seemed to understand was simple practicality, as might appeal even to an animal—and this, in practice, describes most men. If I suggested he change anything in his life, he simply replied, without regret, that it was too late. Yet he had a sincere belief in honesty and similar virtues.

There was a certain undeniable originality, however slight, to be found in him, and I sometimes noticed that he was thinking independently and expressing his own opinions—a phenomenon so rare that I would gladly walk ten miles to observe it. It amounted to the re-origination of many of society’s institutions. Though he hesitated and perhaps struggled to express himself clearly, there was always a worthwhile thought behind his words. Still, his thinking was so basic and rooted in his animal existence that, while more promising than that of someone merely learned, it rarely grew into anything that could be reported. He suggested that there might be true geniuses among the lowest ranks of society, however permanently humble and illiterate, who always view things in their own way, or who do not pretend to see at all; people who are as unfathomable as Walden Pond was once thought to be, though they might seem dark and muddy.

Many travelers went out of their way to visit me and see the inside of my house, using the excuse of asking for a glass of water. I told them I drank from the pond and pointed in that direction, offering to lend them a dipper. Though I lived far off, I was not spared the annual migration that takes place around the first of April, when everyone seems to be on the move; and I had my share of interesting visitors, some of whom were quite curious sorts. Men with diminished mental capacity from the almshouse and elsewhere visited me; but I tried to have them make full use of whatever wit they possessed, encouraging them to share their stories with me—making wit the subject of our conversation—and thus found myself compensated. I actually found some of them wiser than the so-called *overseers* of the poor and town selectmen, and thought perhaps it was time the tables were turned. When it comes to wit, I learned there isn't much difference between the half and the whole. One day, a harmless, simpleton pauper—whom I had often seen keeping cattle from wandering by sitting on a bushel in the fields—visited me and expressed a wish to live as I did. He told me, in the plainest and sincerest way, quite distinct from anything that could be called humility, that he was “deficient in intellect.” Those were his words. The Lord had made him that way, yet he supposed the Lord cared as much for him as for anyone else. “I have always been so,” he said. “From my childhood; I never had much mind; I wasn’t like other children; I am weak in the head. It was the Lord’s will, I suppose.” And there he was, proving the truth of his words. He was a metaphysical puzzle to me. I have rarely met anyone on such promising ground—so simple, so sincere, so true in all he said. Indeed, the more he seemed to humble himself, the more he was exalted. At first I wondered if this might be the result of some wise policy. It seemed that from such a basis of honesty and candor as this poor, simple-minded pauper had laid, our interactions might proceed to something better than the conversations of sages.

I also had guests from those not generally considered among the town’s poor, but who should be counted among the world’s poor in any case—guests who appeal not to your hospitality, but to your *hospitalality*; who earnestly want to be helped, and begin their request by assuring you that they are committed, at least, never to help themselves. I require of a visitor that he not be literally starving, though he may have the best appetite possible, however he came by it. Objects of charity are not guests. Men who did not know when their visit was over, even as I went about my business again, responding to them from increasingly greater distances. Men of nearly every degree of wit visited me during the migratory season. Some had more wits than they knew what to do with; runaway slaves with plantation manners, who would listen from time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if hearing the hounds on their trail, and looked at me pleadingly, as if to say,—

“O Christian, will you send me back?”

One genuine runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to continue his journey northward. Men who fixate on a single idea, like a hen with only one chick—and that chick a duckling; men with a thousand ideas and disheveled heads, like those hens made to care for a hundred chicks, all chasing after one bug, with a score lost in every morning’s dew—and end up frizzled and mangy as a result; men whose ideas are like legs, a sort of intellectual centipede that makes your skin crawl. One man proposed a guest book in which visitors would write their names, as at the White Mountains; but, alas! My memory was too good to make that necessary.

I couldn’t help but notice some peculiarities among my visitors. Girls, boys, and young women generally seemed happy to be in the woods. They looked into the pond and at the flowers, making the most of their time. Businessmen—even farmers—thought only about solitude, work, and how far I lived from something or other; and though they said they enjoyed an occasional walk in the woods, it was clear they did not. Restless, committed men whose time was fully taken up with earning or keeping a living; ministers who spoke of God as if they had a monopoly on the subject and couldn’t tolerate differing views; doctors, lawyers, uneasy housekeepers who inspected my cupboard and bed when I was out—how did Mrs. —— know my sheets were not as clean as hers?—young men who were no longer young, having decided it safest to follow the traditional paths of the professions—all these generally claimed that it was impossible to accomplish as much good in my situation. Ah! There was the real issue. The elderly, infirm, and the timid—of any age or gender—focused most on sickness, accidents, and death; for them, life seemed filled with danger—though what danger is there if you don't think of it?—and they thought a prudent man would select his position so that Dr. B. would be nearby in case of an emergency. To them, the village was literally a *com-munity*, a league for mutual defense—you’d think they wouldn’t go huckleberrying without a medicine chest. The truth is, if a man is alive, there’s always *danger* he may die, though the risk is arguably less for one who is dead-alive to begin with. A man sits through as many risks as he takes on. Lastly, the self-proclaimed reformers, the biggest bores of all, thought 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 didn’t realize the third line was,

These are the folks that bother the man  
That lives in the house that I built.

I did not worry about hen-harriers, for I kept no chickens; but I did worry about man-harriers.

I had more heartening visitors than those just mentioned. Children picking berries, railroad workers out for a Sunday morning walk in clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and philosophers—in short, all honest seekers who came to the woods for freedom’s sake and truly left the village behind—I was ready to greet with, “Welcome, Englishmen! Welcome, Englishmen!” for I had had dealings with that race.

## The Bean-Field

Meanwhile my beans, planted in rows whose total length was already seven miles, were waiting impatiently to be hoed, since the earliest had grown quite a bit before the latest were even in the ground; in fact, they would not be easily set aside. What was the meaning of this steady and dignified, almost Herculean labor, I did not know. I came to love my rows, my beans, though there were far more than I needed. They rooted me in the earth, and so I gained strength like Antaeus. But why should I grow them? Only Heaven knows. This was my peculiar labor all summer—to turn this portion of the earth’s surface, which had previously only yielded cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like—sweet wild fruit and lovely flowers—into a producer of this pulse. What should I learn from beans, or beans from me? I cared for them, I hoed them, and watched over them early and late; this was my daily labor. It is a fine, broad leaf to behold. My helpers are the dews and rains that water this dry soil, and whatever fertility is in the ground itself, which is mostly poor and exhausted. My foes are worms, cold days, and most of all woodchucks. The last have nibbled clean a quarter of an acre for me. But what right had I to drive out the johnswort and the rest, and break up their old herb garden? Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, moving on to meet new challenges.

When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was brought from Boston to my hometown, through these very woods and this very field, to the pond. It is one of the oldest scenes in my memory. And now, tonight, my flute has sent its echoes over those same waters. The pine trees still stand here, older than I am; or, if some have fallen, I have cooked my supper with their stumps, and fresh growth is rising all around, preparing another landscape for new children’s eyes. Almost the same johnswort springs from the same ancient roots in this pasture, and even I have finally helped to clothe that dream landscape of my childhood, and one result of my presence and influence is visible in these bean leaves, corn blades, and potato vines.

I planted roughly two and a half acres of upland; and since it had only been about fifteen years since the land was cleared, and I myself had removed two or three cords of stumps, I did not use any fertilizer; but during the summer, as evidenced by the arrowheads I uncovered while hoeing, an extinct nation had once lived and planted corn and beans here before white settlers cleared the land, and so had, to some degree, already depleted the soil for just this crop.

Before any woodchuck or squirrel had crossed the road or the sun had risen above the scrub oaks, while the dew was still heavy, despite warnings from farmers—I recommend you do your work, if possible, while the dew is on—I began to take down the ranks of proud weeds in my bean field and scatter dust over them. Early in the morning I worked barefoot, like a sculptor shaping clay in the dewy, crumbling earth, but later in the day the sun blistered my feet. There the sunlight guided my hoe as I paced slowly up and down the yellow, gravelly upland, between the long green rows, fifteen rods in length, one end in a cluster of shrub oaks, where I could rest in the shade, the other in a blackberry field, where the unripe berries ripened as I made another round. Clearing the weeds, placing fresh soil around the bean stems, and encouraging this particular weed I had sown—making the yellow soil express its summer spirit in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood, pepper, and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass—this was my daily routine. Because I had little help from animals, hired men, or modern farm tools, I was much slower and became much more familiar with my beans than most. Yet hand labor, even when it approaches drudgery, may not be the worst sort of idleness. It holds a lasting moral lesson, and even produces a classical result for the scholar. I was truly an *agricola laboriosus* to the travelers headed west through Lincoln and Wayland to who knows where; they, sitting comfortably in carriages, elbows on knees, reins hanging loose; I, the stay-at-home, laborious native. But soon my homestead passed from their view and their thoughts. Mine was the only open, cultivated field for quite a distance on either side of the road, so they paid it much attention; and sometimes the man in the field heard more of the travelers’ talk than was intended for his ears: “Beans so late! peas so late!”—since I kept planting when others were already hoeing—the minister-farmer would never have guessed. “Corn, my boy, for fodder; corn for fodder.” “Does he *live* there?” the woman in the black bonnet asks the man in the gray coat; and the rugged farmer stops his tired horse to ask what I am doing where there’s no manure in the furrow, and suggests a little wood-chip dirt, or any waste material, maybe ashes or plaster. But here were two and a half acres of furrows and only a hoe as cart and two hands to pull it—having an aversion to other carts and horses—and the needed chip dirt far away. Passing travelers, as they rattled by, compared my field out loud to the ones they’d already seen, so I learned my standing in the farming community. Mine was one field not in Mr. Coleman’s report. And, by the way, who calculates the worth of the crop that nature produces untended in the wild fields beyond man’s reach? The crop of *English* hay is carefully weighed, its moisture measured, with the silicates and potash counted; but in all the hollows, ponds, woods, pastures, and swamps grows a rich and varied crop that man never harvests. My field was, in a sense, the link between wild and cultivated land; as some states are civilized, others half-civilized, others still savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, only half-cultivated. The beans I grew cheerfully returned to their wild, primitive state, and my hoe played the *Ranz des Vaches* for them.

Nearby, from the topmost branch of a birch, the brown-thrasher—or red mavis, as some call him—sings all morning, pleased by your presence, ready to find another farmer’s field if yours wasn’t here. While you’re planting, he calls, “Drop it, drop it—cover it up, cover it up—pull it up, pull it up, pull it up.” But since these weren’t corn, they were safe from him. You may wonder what his random melodies, his attempts at being a one-string (or twenty-string) Paganini, have to do with your planting, and still prefer them over leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap kind of top dressing I fully believed in.

As I drew fresh soil up to the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of forgotten nations who, in ancient times, lived under these skies, and brought to light their small hunting and war tools. Mixed among other stones, some showed signs of being burnt by Indian fires, some by the sun, and also pieces of pottery and glass left by later farmers. When my hoe struck the stones, the music echoed through woods and sky, a soundtrack to my work that instantly produced an immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans I hoed, nor I who hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, acquaintances who had gone into the city for oratorios. Overhead, the night-hawk circled in the bright afternoons—for sometimes I worked all day—like a speck in my eye, or in heaven’s eye, sometimes swooping down with a rush as if the heavens were being torn, yet a seamless sky always remained; tiny spirits filling the air and laying eggs on the ground, on sand or on rocky hilltops, where few people find them; graceful and slim, like ripples rising from the pond, like leaves lifted by the wind to float in the sky; such kinship exists in Nature. The hawk is an airborne brother to the wave he flies over and surveys, his wings matching the budding pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling high above, alternately climbing and descending, joining and separating, as if they mirrored my own thoughts. Or a flock of wild pigeons caught my attention, moving from this wood to that with a soft, quick flutter; or from under a rotten stump, my hoe unearthed a sluggish, exotic-looking spotted salamander—a relic of Egypt and the Nile, yet alive here as my contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sights and sounds appeared anywhere along the row, part of the endless entertainment the countryside supplies.

On holidays the town fires its big guns, which echo like popguns in these woods, and bits of martial music occasionally drift this far. To me, out in my bean-field at the town’s edge, the cannons sounded as if a puffball had burst; and when there was a military parade I didn’t know of, I sometimes had a vague itch all day, as if an outbreak—scarlatina or canker-rash—might erupt on the distant skyline. Eventually, a favorable breeze, rushing over the fields and down the Wayland road, brought me news of the “trainers.” The distant hum sounded as if someone’s bees had swarmed, and the neighbors, following Virgil’s advice, tried to lure them back into the hive by tapping on some resonant household pot. And when the sound finally faded away and the hum had ceased, and no wind brought further news, I knew they had gathered up the last drone into the Middlesex hive, and now the focus was on the honey it contained.

I felt proud knowing that the liberties of Massachusetts and of our homeland were in such safe keeping; and as I returned to my hoeing, I was filled with an indescribable confidence, and carried on my work cheerfully, with a calm trust in the future.

When there were several bands of musicians, it sounded as though the whole village was a massive bellows, with all the buildings swelling and collapsing in turn with a tremendous noise. Yet sometimes, a truly noble and uplifting strain would reach these woods—the sound of the trumpet celebrating fame—and I felt as if I could confront a Mexican with real relish—for why should we always settle for insignificant things?—and I looked around for a woodchuck or a skunk to test my courage on. These martial airs seemed as distant as Palestine, reminding me of a parade of crusaders on the horizon, with a faint galloping and quivering movement of the elm tree tops that hung over the village. This was one of the *great* days, though from my clearing the sky looked the same as it always did—endlessly grand—and I could see no change in it.

My long acquaintance with beans was a unique experience—planting, hoeing, harvesting, threshing, sorting, and selling them (the last was the hardest)—and even tasting them. I was determined to truly know beans. While they were growing, I would hoe from five in the morning until noon, and usually spent the remainder of the day on other matters. Consider the close and curious knowledge one gains of various kinds of weeds—it’s worth repeating in this account, since there was plenty of repetition in the labor—disrupting their delicate structures so relentlessly and making such sharp distinctions with the hoe: leveling entire ranks of one kind while carefully cultivating another. There’s Roman wormwood—there’s pigweed—there’s sorrel—there’s piper-grass—have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don’t let him have a single fiber in the shade; if you do, he’ll flip himself and be as green as a leek in two days. It was a long war, not against cranes, but against weeds, those Trojans who had sun, rain, and dew on their side. Every day, the beans saw me coming to their rescue armed with a hoe, thinning their enemies’ ranks, filling the trenches with weedy casualties. Many a proud, crest-waving Hector, standing a full foot above his crowded fellows, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust.

Those summer days that some of my contemporaries devoted to fine arts in Boston or Rome, others to contemplation in India, and others to commerce in London or New York, I—along with the other farmers of New England—devoted to farming. Not that I cared for beans as food, for I am naturally a Pythagorean when it comes to beans, whether as porridge or as ballots, and swapped them for rice; but perhaps, as some people must work in the fields if only for the sake of metaphors and expression, to serve as fodder for some future parable. All in all, it was rare amusement, which, if taken too far, might have turned into a vice. Though I gave the beans no manure and didn’t hoe them all even once, I did hoe them well where I did, and was rewarded for it in the end, “there being in truth,” as Evelyn said, “no compost or enrichment whatsoever comparable to this continual motion, turning, and working of the soil with the spade.” “The earth,” he adds elsewhere, “especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism by which it draws the salt, power, or virtue (call it what you will) that gives it life, and is the reason behind all the labor we devote to it, to sustain us; all manuring and other lesser treatments are but substitutes for this improvement.” Furthermore, this being one of those “worn-out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath,” had perhaps, as Sir Kenelm Digby thought likely, drawn in “vital spirits” from the air. I harvested twelve bushels of beans.

To be more specific, since it’s said that Mr. Coleman has focused mainly on the expensive experiments of gentleman farmers, my expenses were as follows:

For a hoe,.................................. $ 0.54  
Ploughing, harrowing, and furrowing,......... 7.50 Too much.  
Beans for seed,.............................. 3.12½  
Potatoes for seed,........................... 1.33  
Peas for seed,............................... 0.40

Turnip seed,................................. 0.06  
 White line for crow fence,................... 0.02  
 Horse cultivator and boy three hours,........ 1.00  
 Horse and cart to get crop,.................. 0.75  
 ————  
 In all,................................. $14.72½  

My income was (patrem familias vendacem, non emacem esse oportet), from  

Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold,. $16.94  
 Five " large potatoes,.................... 2.50  
 Nine " small,............................. 2.25  
 Grass,.......................................... 1.00  
 Stalks,......................................... 0.75  
 ————  
 In all,................................... $23.44  
 Leaving a pecuniary profit,  
 as I have elsewhere said, of.............. $8.71½.  

This sums up my experience in raising beans. Plant the ordinary small white bush bean around the first of June, in rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, making sure to choose fresh, round, and unmixed seed. First watch for worms and replant where you find empty spots. Then keep an eye out for woodchucks if your field is exposed—they’ll nibble away the first tender leaves almost completely as they go; and, when the young tendrils appear, they notice and will clip them off with both buds and young pods, sitting upright like a squirrel. But, most importantly, harvest as early as possible if you want to avoid frost and end up with a good, marketable crop; this can save you from much loss.

Additionally, I gained this experience: I said to myself, I will not plant beans and corn with such effort another summer, but will instead sow such seeds—if the seed isn’t lost—as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they won’t grow here, even with less labor and fertilizer, and sustain me, for surely the land is not exhausted for these crops. Alas! I said this to myself, but now another summer has gone by, and another, and another, and I’m forced to tell you, Reader, that the seeds I planted, if indeed they *were* the seeds of those virtues, were worm-eaten or had lost their ability to grow, and so did not come up. People are usually only as brave as their fathers were, or as timid. This generation is certain to plant corn and beans each year just as the Native Americans did centuries ago and taught the first settlers, as if it’s fated. I saw an old man the other day, to my amazement, making the holes with a hoe for probably the seventieth time, and not just for himself to lie in! But why shouldn’t the New Englander try new things, and not put so much focus on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards—why not raise different crops? Why do we care so much about our seed beans, and not at all about a new generation of people? We’d truly be fed and uplifted if, when we met a man, we were certain to see some of those qualities I’ve named—qualities we all value above other crops, though they mostly float in the air—had taken root and grown in him. Every now and then along the road such a subtle and indescribable quality as truth or justice can be found, even if it’s just a little, or a new variety. Our ambassadors should be instructed to bring home the seeds of such traits, and Congress should help spread them across the land. We should never hesitate to be sincere. If only we had the core of goodness and friendship present, we wouldn’t cheat, insult, and exile each other out of meanness. Most men I hardly meet at all—they seem not to have time, being busy with their beans. We shouldn’t encounter a man who is forever toiling, leaning on his hoe or spade as a crutch between tasks, not like a mushroom but partially risen out of the earth, something greater than upright, like swallows walking on the ground:—

“And as he spake, his wings would now and then

Spread, as though he meant to fly, then close again,”  

so that we might suspect we were conversing with an angel. Bread may not always sustain us; but it always does us good. It even eases the stiffness in our joints and makes us more flexible and buoyant, when we don't even realize what ails us, to recognize any generosity in people or in Nature, to share any pure and heroic joy.

Ancient poetry and mythology at least suggest that farming was once considered a sacred art; but it is now pursued with careless haste and indifference by us, with our aim simply to have large farms and big crops. We have no festivals, processions, or ceremonies—not even our Cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings—by which the farmer expresses any sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred beginnings. He is tempted by prizes and feasts. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Earthly Jove, but rather to the infernal Plutus. Through greed, selfishness, and the low habit—from which none of us is entirely free—of thinking of the soil chiefly as property, or as a way to acquire property, we deform the landscape and debase farming, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature only as a thief does. Cato says that the profits of agriculture are especially pious or just (*maximeque pius quæstus*), and according to Varro the old Romans “called the same earth Mother and Ceres, and believed those who cultivated it led a pious and useful life, and that they alone were left of the race of King Saturn.”

We tend to forget that the sun shines equally on our cultivated fields, the prairies, and the forests. They all reflect and absorb his rays the same way, and the farmland is only a small part of the glorious scene he sees each day. From his perspective, the earth is all cultivated like a garden. Therefore, we should receive the benefits of his light and warmth with the same trust and greatness of spirit. What if I care for the seed of these beans and harvest them in the fall? This wide field I have watched for so long doesn't look to me as its main caretaker, but turns away to more favorable influences, which water it and make it green. These beans have results I cannot harvest. Don't they partly grow for woodchucks? The ear of wheat (in Latin *spica*, sometimes *speca*, from *spe*, hope) shouldn't be the husbandman’s only hope; its kernel or grain (*granum*, from *gerendo*, bearing) is not all it bears. How, then, can our harvest fail? Should I not also rejoice in the abundance of weeds whose seeds fill the birds’ granaries? It matters little whether the fields fill the farmer’s barns. The true husbandman will stop worrying, just as squirrels show no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and will finish his labor each day, giving up all claim to his crops, and in his mind sacrificing not only his first fruits, but his last as well.

## The Village

After hoeing, or after reading and writing in the morning, I usually bathed again in the pond, swimming across one of its coves for some exercise, and washed the dust of labor from my body, or smoothed out the last wrinkle caused by study, and for the afternoon I was truly free. Every few days, I walked to the village to hear some of the gossip that is always circulating there, passed from person to person or through newspapers, and which, taken in small doses, was as refreshing in its way as the rustling leaves or the peeping frogs. As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked into the village to observe the men and boys; instead of the wind in the pines, I heard the rattle of carts. One way from my house was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the elms and buttonwoods in the distance was a village of busy people, as peculiar to me as prairie dogs, each sitting at the entrance of its burrow, or running to a neighbor’s home to chat. I went there often to study their habits. The village seemed to me like a large news room; and, like Redding & Company’s on State Street, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt, meal, and other groceries on one side to support the whole. Some possess such a huge appetite for this commodity—that is, the news—and such sturdy digestive systems, that they can sit in public places forever without stirring, letting it pass through them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, producing only numbness and insensitivity to pain—otherwise, it would often be painful to hear—without affecting their consciousness at all. I hardly ever passed through the village without seeing a line of such characters, either sitting on a ladder to sun themselves, bodies leaning forward, eyes glancing up and down the street with satisfaction, or leaning against a barn with hands in their pockets like caryatids, as if holding it up. Being outside, they heard everything on the wind. These are the coarsest mills, processing gossip roughly before it’s carried into finer, subtler hoppers inside houses. I noticed that the heart of the village consisted of the grocery, the bar-room, the post office, and the bank; and, as part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a cannon, and a fire engine close by; and the houses were arranged so as to make the most of humanity, in rows facing each other, so every traveler had to “run the gauntlet,” and everyone—man, woman, and child—could get a shot at him. Of course, those with the best vantage, where they could see and be seen first, paid more for their places; and the few scattered residents on the outskirts, where gaps in the line began and travelers could slip down cow paths to escape, paid little for the privilege. Signs were posted everywhere to attract travelers; some played on the appetite, like the tavern or eating cellar; some tempted by fancy, like the dry goods shop or jeweler; and others by the hair, feet, or clothing, like the barber, shoemaker, or tailor. There was, beyond that, a general invitation to stop at any house, with company expected any time. Usually, I escaped these perils either by walking directly and quickly to my destination, as is advised when running the gauntlet, or by keeping my mind on high things, like Orpheus, who “loudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre, drowned out the Sirens, and kept himself safe.” Sometimes I left suddenly, so no one could tell where I was, caring little for decorum, and never hesitating at a gap in a fence. I even sometimes burst into houses where I was well received, and after hearing all the latest news, including the prospects for war, peace, and the fate of the world, I was let out the back and escaped to the woods again.

It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to set off into the night, especially if it was dark and stormy, launching out from some well-lit village parlor or lecture hall, a bag of rye or cornmeal over my shoulder, bound for my snug shelter in the woods, having closed everything up for the night and withdrawn below decks with a jovial crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer self at the helm, or even tying up the helm if the way was clear. I had many a warm thought by my cabin fire as “I sailed.” I was never lost or troubled by any weather, although I faced some hard storms. It is darker in the woods, even on ordinary nights, than most people think. I often had to look up through openings between the trees to see my path, and where there was no cart-path, I felt the faint trail with my feet, or navigated by the positions of certain trees, touching them with my hands, passing between two pines for example, just eighteen inches apart, deep in the woods, every time—even on the darkest nights. Sometimes after coming home late on a dark, muggy night, with my feet feeling the path my eyes could not see, distracted until I touched the latch, I couldn’t recall a single step of my walk, and I wondered if my body could find its way home if my mind deserted it, the way your hand finds your mouth unaided. Several times, when visitors stayed into the evening and it turned very dark, I had to lead them out to the cart-path behind the house and then show them which direction to head, instructing them to follow the way more with their feet than their eyes. One especially dark night I guided two young men who had been fishing on the pond. They lived about a mile away through the woods and knew the path well. A few days later, one told me they had wandered about most of the night, right by their own land, and didn’t get home until nearly morning; several heavy showers fell in the meantime, and the leaves were soaked, so they were drenched through. I’ve heard of many going astray even on village streets when the darkness was so thick you “could cut it with a knife.” Some living outside town came in to shop and, unable to return, had to stay overnight; and ladies and gentlemen, out visiting, sometimes wandered half a mile off course, feeling their way with their feet and not knowing when they'd turned. It's a memorable and valuable experience to be lost in the woods at any time. Often, in a snowstorm, even during the day, you may come out on a familiar road but still can’t tell which way leads to the village. Even if you’ve traveled it a thousand times, you may not recognize it, as if it were a road in Siberia. At night, the confusion is even greater. During our most ordinary walks, we constantly, without realizing it, navigate by landmarks and signposts, and when we go off our usual route, we still keep track of some familiar feature; only when we are truly lost, or turned around—even just once with our eyes closed—do we appreciate the vastness and otherness of Nature. Everyone must learn the compass points again each time they wake up, whether from actual sleep or distraction. Not until we are lost—not until we lose the world—do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and how unlimited our connections truly are.

One afternoon, near the end of my first summer, when I went to the village for a shoe from the cobbler, I was arrested and put in jail, because, as I’ve said elsewhere, I refused to pay a tax to, or accept the authority of, the state that buys and sells men, women, and children like cattle at its Senate House door. My errand was for something else, but wherever a man goes, others will follow and harass him with their dirty institutions, and try to force him into their desperate little club. It’s true, I could have resisted by force, but I preferred for society to “run amok” against me, since it was the truly desperate party. In any case, I was released the next day, got my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in time to have dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I was never troubled by anyone except those representing the state. I had no lock or bolt except on my desk for my papers, not even a nail over my latch or window. I never locked my door day or night—even when I was gone for several days—not even when, the next fall, I spent two weeks in the Maine woods. Yet, my house was more respected than if soldiers guarded it. A tired traveler could rest and warm himself at my fire, the literary-minded could enjoy the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet, could see what I had for dinner or what I might have for supper. Though people of every kind passed by towards the pond, I suffered no real losses from it, and never missed anything but a small volume of Homer, which may have been improperly gilded—this I hope some soldier has found by now. I am convinced that if all men lived as simply as I did then, theft and robbery would be unknown. Such things only take place among those where some possess more than enough while others lack. The Pope’s Homers would soon be fairly distributed.—

“Nec bella fuerunt, Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes.”

“Nor wars did men molest, When only beechen bowls were in request.”

“You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; common men are like the grass. When the wind blows over the grass, the grass bends.”

## The Ponds

Sometimes, when I’d had enough of human company and gossip, and worn out all my friends in the village, I would wander even farther westward than usual into yet more remote areas of the town, “to fresh woods and pastures new,” or, as the sun set, dine on huckleberries and blueberries atop Fair Haven Hill, and collect a store for a few days. The fruits do not yield their best flavor to the purchaser, nor to anyone who raises them for market. There is only one way to truly taste them, but few do. If you want to know the taste of huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the partridge. It’s a common error to think you’ve tasted huckleberries when you’ve never picked them. A huckleberry never makes it to Boston; they have not been known there since Boston grew on her three hills. The divine, delicate part of the fruit is lost with the bloom that is rubbed off in the market wagon, and they become just fodder. As long as Eternal Justice rules, not an innocent huckleberry will reach there from the hills.

At times, when my hoeing was done for the day, I joined a companion who had been fishing on the pond since morning, silent and still as a duck or floating leaf, and after trying various philosophies, he usually concluded, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of Cœnobites. There was one older man, an expert fisherman and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who liked to think of my house as a fishermen’s club; and I was just as glad when he sat in my doorway arranging his lines. Occasionally we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the boat, me at the other; but there were few words, for he had grown deaf in his later years, though he sometimes hummed a psalm which blended well with my thoughts. Thus our communication was entirely harmonious, far sweeter in memory than if it had been full of conversation. When, as was common, I had no one to share my thoughts with, I would strike the side of my boat with my paddle, sending out circles of sound that echoed through the woods, stirring every valley and hillside as the keeper of a menagerie does with his wild beasts, until I drew a growl from every wooded distance.

On warm evenings I often sat in the boat playing my flute, watching the perch, which I seemed to have enchanted, circle around me, and the moon travel over the ribbed pond bottom, scattered with the wrecks of forest trees. In earlier days, I had come to this pond with friends on dark summer nights, building a fire near the water’s edge—believing it drew in the fish—to catch pouts with a string of worms; and when we finished, late at night, we tossed the burning sticks up like fireworks, which, as they landed in the pond, hissed and left us suddenly in total darkness. Whistling a tune, we would find our way back to the company of humans again. But now I lived by the shore.

Sometimes, after spending time in a village parlor until everyone had gone to bed, I would return to the woods, and partly for the next day’s dinner, spend midnight fishing from a boat as the moon shone down, serenaded by owls and foxes, with the occasional mysterious call of some strange bird nearby. These were very memorable and precious times—anchored in forty feet of water, twenty or thirty rods from shore, sometimes surrounded by thousands of small perch and shiners dimpling the water, and connected by a long line to mysterious nocturnal fish far below, or sometimes towing sixty feet of line along as I drifted with the gentle breeze, every now and then feeling a light vibration that hinted at some creature prowling at the end, indecisive and slow to strike. Eventually, you slowly pull up, hand over hand, some horned pout, squeaking and twisting as it comes to the surface. It was strange, especially on dark nights, when my thoughts wandered to vast cosmic themes, to feel even a faint tug, breaking my reverie and reminding me of Nature’s presence. It was as if I might next cast my line skyward as well as down, since the air was scarcely more dense than the water. Thus I caught two worlds with one hook.

The scenery of Walden is modest in scale, and though very beautiful, it doesn’t reach true grandeur, nor can it mean much to those who haven’t lived long by its shore; yet this pond is so notable for its depth and purity that it deserves special mention. It is a clear, deep green well, half a mile long, about a mile and three-quarters around, containing about sixty-one and a half acres; a spring in the pine and oak woods, with no visible inlet or outlet except the clouds and evaporation. Surrounding hills climb sharply to heights of forty to eighty feet, though to the south-east and east they reach a hundred and a hundred fifty feet within a short distance. These hills are covered in woods. All our Concord waters have at least two colors: one at a distance, and another, more accurate, close up. The first depends on the light, matching the sky. In clear summer weather, they appear blue from a little way off, especially when agitated, and from far away all are the same. In storms they sometimes look dark slate-colored. The sea itself appears blue one day and green the next with no apparent atmospheric change. I’ve seen the river, when the land was snow-covered, with water and ice as green as grass. Some say blue “is the color of pure water, whether liquid or solid.” But looking directly down from a boat, our waters show many colors. Walden is blue at one time, green at another—even from the same spot. Lying between earth and sky, its color is a blend of both. From a hilltop, it reflects the sky’s blue; but close to shore, it’s yellowish over the sand, then light green, which deepens to a deep green further out. In some lights, even from a hilltop, it’s vivid green near the shore. Some say this is from reflections of greenery, but it is just as green beside the sandy bank and even in the spring before leaves open; it may simply be blue mixing with the yellow of the sand. This is the color of its “iris.” In spring, where the ice first melts (heated by the sun shining through both air and soil), a narrow canal forms around the still-frozen middle. Like other local waters, when stirred and reflecting the sky, it sometimes appears an even darker blue than the sky itself, and I have seen a light, almost indescribably blue shade, like watered silk or steel, more blue than the sky, alternating with the original green on the sides of waves—making the original green seem muddy. It is a glassy greenish blue, like patches of winter sky seen through breaks in the western clouds before sunset. Yet, a glass of its water, held up to the light, is as clear as air. Large glass panes look greenish due to their “body,” as makers call it, but a small piece appears clear. How large a volume of Walden water it would take to look green I have not determined. Our river water seems black or very dark brown from above and, like most ponds, gives a yellowish tint to the bather’s skin; but Walden’s water is so pure that the bather’s body appears alabaster white, even magnified and distorted, which produces a monstrous effect, worthy of a Michelangelo subject.

The water is so clear you can easily see the bottom at depths of twenty-five to thirty feet. Paddling across, you may see schools of perch and shiners far below, perhaps only an inch long, yet the perch easily recognized by their bars, making you think they must be ascetic fish to live there. Once, in winter, years ago, after cutting holes in the ice to fish for pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed my axe onto the ice, and, as if by bad luck, it skidded four or five rods straight into a hole, where the water was twenty-five feet deep. Curious, I lay on the ice and looked down until I saw the axe standing on its head, handle straight up, gently swaying with the pond’s pulse. There it might have remained until the handle rotted away—if I had not intervened. I made another hole right above it with an ice chisel, then cut the longest birch in the area with my knife, attached a slip-noose to it, carefully lowered it over the axe handle, cinched it tight, and pulled the axe up again using the birch.

The shore consists of a strip of smooth, rounded white stones, like paving stones, except for a few short sand beaches. The banks are steep; in many places, one leap will land you in water over your head, and without its remarkable clarity, that would be the last you’d ever see of the bottom until you surfaced on the other side. Some believe it has no bottom. There is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would see no weeds; apart from little meadows flooded recently—not properly belonging to it—even a closer look finds no flag, bulrush, or lily, yellow or white, except for a few small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two; but these, to a bather, might go unnoticed, and these plants are as clean and bright as the water itself. The stones continue a rod or two into the water, then the bottom turns to pure sand, except in the deepest spots, with a bit of sediment, likely from the decay of leaves carried there for years, and even in midwinter, a bright green weed appears on anchors.

We have one other pond like this: White Pond, in Nine Acre Corner, two and a half miles west. Though I know most ponds within a dozen miles of here, I don’t know a third as pure or deep as these. Perhaps many generations have drunk from, admired, and measured it, and have passed away, leaving its water green and clear as ever. Not an intermittent spring! Maybe on the morning Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, Walden Pond already existed, breaking up in a gentle rain and mist with a southern wind, covered with countless ducks and geese, still innocent of the fall, when such pure ponds were enough for them. Even then, it rose and fell, clearing its depths and reflecting the hues it wears today, and received a patent from heaven to be the only Walden Pond and the distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how many lost literatures this was a Castalian Fountain? Or what nymphs once presided over it in the Golden Age? It is a gem of the highest order, which Concord wears in her crown.

Yet perhaps the first people who came to this well left some trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised to notice, encircling the pond—even in places where a dense wood was only recently cut down along the shore—a narrow, shelf-like path on the steep hillside. This path rises and falls, approaches and recedes from the water’s edge, and is probably as old as humanity here, worn by the feet of the original hunters, and still, from time to time, unknowingly used by those living here now. It is especially clear to anyone standing on the middle of the pond in winter, right after a light snowfall; then, it appears as a smooth, undulating white line, free from weeds and twigs, and is visible from a quarter of a mile away in places where, in summer, it is hardly noticeable even up close. The snow, so to speak, prints it anew in clear white relief. The decorative grounds of future villas, which one day may be built here, might still preserve some trace of this path.

The pond rises and falls, but whether it does so regularly or not, and in what cycle, nobody knows—though, as usual, many claim they do. It is commonly higher in winter and lower in summer, but this does not always correspond with the general wetness or dryness of the seasons. I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than during the time I lived by it. There is a narrow sandbar jutting into the pond, with very deep water on one side, where I helped boil a kettle of chowder about six rods from the main shore, around the year 1824—a thing that has not been possible for twenty-five years now. On the other hand, my friends used to doubt me when I told them that just a few years later, I regularly fished from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the only shore they recognized, which has since turned 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, as high as it was thirty years ago, and people are once again fishing in the meadow. This makes for a difference in water level, at most, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed from the surrounding hills is very slight, so this overflowing must be due to forces affecting the deep springs. This same summer the pond has begun dropping again. It’s remarkable that this sort of fluctuation, whether periodic or not, seems to need many years to complete. I have observed one full rise and part of two falls, and expect that in another dozen to fifteen years, the water will again be as low as I have ever seen it. Flint’s Pond, a mile east, allowing for its inlets and outlets, along with the smaller ponds between, seems to follow Walden’s changes, recently reaching their highest marks at the same time as Walden. The same holds true for White Pond, as far as I have seen.

This long-interval rise and fall at Walden serves at least this purpose: the water standing at great height for a year or so, though it makes walking around the shoreline difficult, ends up killing the shrubs and young trees—like pitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, and others—that have grown around its edge since the last high water. When the pond drops again, an open, unobstructed shore is left behind; for, unlike many other ponds or any body affected by tides, its shoreline is at its cleanest when the water is lowest. On the side nearest my house, a row of pitch pines fifteen feet tall have been killed and toppled, as if forced over by a lever, halting any further encroachment; and their size shows how many years have passed since the last rise as high as this. Through this fluctuation, the pond asserts its right to a shore, and so the *shore* is *shorn*, and the trees can’t claim it merely by growing there. These are the lips of the lake where no beard grows. From time to time, it licks its chaps. When the water is high, alders, willows, and maples send out masses of fibrous red roots several feet long from all sides of their stems in the water, reaching three or four feet above the ground, all in an effort to remain standing; and I have noticed that high-bush blueberries along the shore, which usually bear no fruit, will produce abundantly in years like these.

Some have puzzled over how the shore could be so evenly paved. All my townsfolk know the old tradition—one recounted even by the oldest residents, who say they heard it in their youth—that long ago, Native Americans were holding a pow-wow on a hill here, which rose as high above the ground as the pond now sinks below, when they began using excessive profanity, as the story has it, though that’s a vice the Indians were never guilty of. While they were doing this, the hill suddenly trembled and sank, and only one old woman—“Walden”—escaped, which is how the pond supposedly got its name. People guess that when the hill collapsed, its stones rolled down to form the present shore. One thing’s certain: once there was no pond here, and now there is; and this fable does not contradict the story of that old settler I mentioned, who recalls coming here with a divining rod, seeing a thin mist on the grass, watching the hazel point steadily downward, and so decided to dig a well. As for the stones, many still think they cannot be explained by the action of waves against these hills, but I notice the hills around are full of similar stones, and people have had to pile them up along both sides of the nearest railroad cut. Also, there are the most stones where the shore drops off steeply; so, unfortunately, the mystery is solved for me. I have identified the “paver.” If the name isn’t from some English locality—like Saffron Walden, for instance—then it might well have originally been called *Walled-in* Pond.

The pond was, in a way, my own well, already dug. For four months of the year, its water is as cold as it is always pure, and I think it’s as good as any, maybe the best, in town. In winter, all exposed water is colder than springs or wells that are sheltered. I measured the temperature of pond water that had been in my room from five in the evening until noon the next day—March 6, 1846—where it reached 65° or 70° (partly due to sun on the roof), and it measured 42°, a degree colder than water freshly drawn from one of the coldest wells in the village. The Boiling Spring, the same day, was 45°, the warmest of any I tested, though it is the coldest I know in summer, when its shallow and stagnant surface water isn’t mixed in. What’s more, Walden never gets as warm as most water exposed to the sun in summer, because of its depth. In the hottest weather, I’d usually put a bucketful in my cellar, where it’d cool overnight and stay cool all day, though I’d also visit a nearby spring. The water was as good after a week as the moment I drew it, and it never tasted of the pump. Anyone camping for a week on a pond shore in summer needs only to bury a bucket of water a few feet deep in the shade near camp to go without the luxury of ice.

Pickerel have been caught in Walden, one weighing seven pounds, not to mention another that pulled off a reel with such speed the fisherman estimated it at eight pounds—since he never saw it; also perch and pouts (some over two pounds each), shiners, chivins or roach (*Leuciscus pulchellus*), a few breams, and two eels (one at four pounds)—I’m precise because a fish’s weight is usually its only claim to fame, and these are the only eels I’ve heard of here. I vaguely recall a small fish, about five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish back, somewhat dace-like—which I include mainly to link fact to fable. Still, this pond isn’t very rich in fish; its pickerel, though not plentiful, are its chief pride. I’ve seen pickerel on the ice, at least three types at once: one long and shallow, steel-colored, most like those from the river; a bright golden, green-reflecting, very deep-bodied kind (the most common); and another, of similar shape and color but with small, dark brown or black spots and some faint blood-red marks—much like a trout. The specific name *reticulatus* doesn’t fit; *guttatus* would suit it better. All these are very firm fish and heavier than they look. The shiners, pouts, and perch, and indeed all the fish in this pond, are cleaner, better looking, and firmer than those found in the river or other ponds, because the water is purer, and they stand out quite easily. Many ichthyologists would probably name new varieties among them. There is also a clean race of frogs and turtles, a few mussels; muskrats and minks leave their marks, and occasionally a traveling mud-turtle appears. Sometimes, launching my boat in the morning, I would startle a huge mud-turtle hiding under it overnight. Ducks and geese visit in spring and fall. The white-bellied swallows (*Hirundo bicolor*) skim the water, and the sandpipers (*Totanus macularius*) “teter” along the rocky shore all summer. I’ve sometimes startled a fish hawk on a white pine overhanging the water, though I doubt a gull ever visits—unlike at Fair Haven. At most, only one loon shows up annually. These are all the animals of note that visit the pond now.

From a boat, in calm weather near the sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet deep—and in other parts of the pond too—you can see circular heaps, half a dozen feet across and about a foot high, of small stones no larger than a hen’s egg, where the sand is otherwise bare. At first you wonder if the Indians made these on the ice (which then sank to the bottom in thaw), but they’re too regular and some too obviously fresh for that. They’re like formations found in rivers, but since there are no suckers or lampreys here, I don’t know what fish make them. Perhaps they’re chivin nests. These add an appealing mystery to the pond’s bottom.

The shore is irregular enough to avoid monotony. I can picture the western shore indented with deep bays, the bolder north shore, and the beautifully scalloped southern shore where successive headlands overlap, suggesting hidden coves. Nowhere does a forest have so fine a setting, or appear as distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake surrounded by hills rising straight from the water. The water, reflecting the forest, provides not only the best foreground but, with its winding shore, the most natural and pleasing boundary. There’s no roughness or imperfection at the edge, as when the woods are partly cut or a cultivated field ends at the water. The trees have all the space they need to spread toward the lake, and each sends its strongest branch that way. Here, Nature has woven a perfect selvage, and the eye follows a perfect progression from the lowest shrub by the water to the tallest tree. Man’s touch is barely visible. The water laps the shore just as it did a thousand years ago.

A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth’s eye; by looking into it, we measure the depth of our own nature. The trees next to the water are the delicate eyelashes along its edge, and the wooded cliffs are its overhanging brows.

Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, on a calm September afternoon with a slight haze blurring the distant shore, I have seen the origin of the phrase “the glassy surface of a lake.” If you look at the water upside down, it looks like the thinnest silken thread, gleaming against the distant pines, dividing one layer of atmosphere from another. It looks as if you could walk dry-shod beneath it to the opposite hills, and the swallows that skim above might perch there. In fact, they sometimes dive below this line, as if by mistake, and are quickly corrected. Looking west across the pond, you need both hands to shield your eyes from the reflected sun as much as the real one—they are equally bright. If you study the surface between them, it’s literally as smooth as glass, except where skater insects, scattered all over, make the most delicate sparkles in the sun, or where a duck grooms itself, or, as mentioned already, a swallow skims so low as to graze the water. Sometimes in the distance, a fish leaps three or four feet in an arc; there’s a bright flash when it leaves and another when it splashes down—sometimes the whole arc glitters. Here and there, perhaps, a thistle-down floats, and the fish dart at it, dimpling the surface again. The water is like molten glass that has cooled but not hardened, and even the few specks on it are pure and beautiful, like imperfections in glass. Sometimes, you might notice a still smoother, darker patch, separated as if by an invisible film—the bloom of the water nymphs—resting there. From a hilltop, you can see a fish jump almost anywhere; even a pickerel or shiner snatching an insect from the calm surface disturbs the whole lake’s equilibrium. Remarkably, this simple fact is widely announced—this piscine “murder” must be known—and from far off I can make out the spreading ripples even when they’re several rods across. You can even spot a water-bug (*Gyrinus*), endlessly circling the surface a quarter-mile away, as they make a visible ripple with two spreading lines, unlike the skaters, who glide with no visible disturbance. When the surface is rough, there are no skaters or water-bugs; in calm weather, they leave the shore and gradually explore the entire pond.

It is a comforting pastime, on one of these fine autumn days when the sun’s warmth is fully felt, to sit on a stump on an overlooking hill and study the endless circles that form on the mostly invisible surface, amid reflected sky and trees. Over this wide expanse, every disturbance is quickly calmed, just as a jarred bowl of water soon smooths as the ripples reach the edge. Not a fish jumps nor an insect falls on the pond without its presence marked in circling dimples—in lines of beauty, like the unfailing rising of its spring, the gentle heartbeat of its life. The same thrill of joy or pain gently pulses through. How peaceful are the happenings of a lake! Human works shine again now as in spring. Yes, every leaf, twig, stone, and cobweb sparkles at midafternoon just as they do under spring’s morning dew. Every motion—whether of an oar or an insect—creates a flash of light; and if an oar falls, what an echo rings out!

On days like these in September or October, Walden is a flawless forest mirror, edged with stones as precious in my eyes as any, regardless of their rarity. Nothing as beautiful, so pure, and so grand as a lake may grace the earth’s surface. It is sky water. It needs no fence. Nations may come and go without staining it. It is a mirror no stone can shatter, whose silver will never wear away, whose gilding Nature perpetually restores; no storm nor dust can dull its always-fresh surface: a mirror where every impurity sinks away, polished by the sun’s gentle rays—the sunlight the perfect dust-cloth—that keeps no breath that is blown upon it but lets its own float up as clouds high above, reflected still within its heart.

A body of water reveals the spirit of the air around it. It is always renewed with life and motion from above. It’s a natural bridge between land and sky. On land, only grass and trees move, but water itself ripples in the breeze. I can see where the wind races across by the streaks or sparkles of light. It’s remarkable that we can look down upon its surface. Perhaps, someday, we’ll look down on the surface of air itself, and notice where an even subtler breath sweeps across it.

The skaters and water-bugs finally vanish by late October, after hard frosts hit; by then, and in November, on calm days, nothing ripples the surface at all. One November afternoon, at the calm end of a days-long rainstorm, with the sky still overcast and the air thick with mist, I noticed the pond was strikingly flat, difficult to tell where the water’s surface actually was. It no longer reflected October’s bright hues, but November’s somber shades. Even as I moved gently, the slight disturbances from my boat created rippling lines across the view. While gazing out, I noticed faint glimmers here and there, as if a few skater bugs had escaped the frost and gathered, or as if the smooth surface betrayed spots where a spring welled up. As I quietly paddled toward one of these, I suddenly found myself amid countless small perch, about five inches long, their bronze-colored bodies bright against the green water, playing at the surface and constantly dimpling it—sometimes leaving bubbles. In this transparent, seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the sky, I felt as though I were floating through the air in a balloon, and their swimming seemed like a bird’s flight just below me, their fins like tiny sails set for travel. There were many such schools, apparently taking advantage of the brief remaining season before winter drew its icy curtain over their world, sometimes making the surface seem as if a slight breeze or a few raindrops had touched it. When I approached clumsily and startled them, they’d splash and ripple the surface with their tails, like a bough brushed over it, and immediately take refuge in deeper water. At last, the wind rose, the mist thickened, and the waves began to stir, so the perch began leaping much higher than before, a hundred black shapes, three inches long, all at once breaking the surface. Even as late as December fifth, one year, I noticed dimples as if rain was about to fall—the air thick with mist—so I hurried to take up the oars, expecting to be soaked, seeing what looked like intense rainfall increasing rapidly, even though I never felt a drop. Suddenly the dimples stopped, for they had been made by the perch, now scared away by the sound of my oars, and I saw their schools fading into the depths again, so after all I enjoyed a dry afternoon.

An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty years ago, when it was still enclosed by dense forests, told me that back then he would see the pond alive with ducks and other waterfowl, and that many eagles frequented it. He would come to fish, using an old log canoe he found on the shore—made from two white pine logs hollowed out and pinned together, cut off square at the ends. It was clumsy but lasted for years before it became waterlogged and perhaps sank. He didn’t know whose boat it was; it belonged to the pond. For an anchor rope, he would tie strips of hickory bark together. Another old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before the Revolutionary War, told him he once saw an iron chest at the bottom, which would occasionally float to shore, but when approached, would move back to deep water and disappear. I liked hearing about the old log canoe, which took the place of an Indian one made of similar material, but more graceful—perhaps once a tree along the pond’s edge, then, as it were, falling into the lake to float for a generation, becoming the most fitting vessel for the waters. I remember when I first looked into these depths, many large trunks lay indistinct beneath the water—old trees, blown over or left on the ice during logging when wood was cheap—but by now, most of these have vanished.

When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was surrounded by tall, thick pine and oak woods, and in some coves, grapevines trailed over trees by the water and made bowers beneath which a boat could pass. The hills forming its banks are so steep, and the woods then so high, that from the west end, the view resembled an amphitheater for a woodland play. In my younger years, I spent many an hour floating out to the middle, letting the wind dictate my direction, lying across the boat’s seats on my back during a summer forenoon, dreamily awake until I was finally roused by the boat drifting ashore, and I rose to see where fate had carried me. I often slipped away to spend what I considered the best part of the day this way. I was rich—not in money, but in abundant sunny hours and summer days, and I spent them freely; nor do I regret not having wasted more in the workshop or classroom. But since those days, woodcutters have destroyed the woods further, and now there will be no rambling through the shaded aisles for years, no occasional glimpses of water through the trees. My Muse may well fall silent from now on. Can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are gone?

Now the tree trunks at the bottom, the old log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods are gone, and the villagers—who hardly know where the pond is—plan, instead of visiting to bathe or drink, to pipe its water, which should be at least as sacred as the Ganges, into town to wash their dishes!—to get their Walden by turning a tap or pulling a plug! That infernal Iron Horse, whose deafening whistle can be heard all through town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with its feet; and it is that very Trojan horse, loaded with a thousand men, brought by greedy “Greeks,” that has devoured all the woods on Walden’s shore! Where is the land’s defender—the Moore of Moore Hill—to meet it at the Deep Cut and strike it down with a just blow?

Still, of all the places I have known, maybe Walden holds up the best and keeps its purity the longest. Many people have been compared to it, but few are worthy. Though woodcutters have bare first one shore and then another, though workers have built their shacks nearby, though the railroad intrudes on the edge and the icemen have skimmed the pond once, it remains unchanged, the same water my younger eyes saw; all the change is in me. After all its ripples, it hasn’t gotten a single line of permanent age. It remains perennially young, and even now I can stand and watch a swallow dip apparently to snatch an insect from its surface, just as long ago. Again tonight it struck me—as if I hadn’t seen it nearly every day for more than twenty years—Why, here is Walden, the same woodland lake I discovered so long ago; where a forest was chopped down only last winter, another now grows just as lushly on the shore; the same thoughts come to mind as then; it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker—and *may* be to me. Surely, it was crafted by a noble person, in whom there was no deceit! He shaped this water with his hand, deepened and clarified it in his mind, and bequeathed it to Concord by his will. Its face shows it still has the same reflections; and I can almost say, Walden, is that you?

It is no mere fancy of mine,  
To decorate a line;  
I could not approach God and Heaven  
Any closer than I live to Walden, even.

I am its stony shore,  
And the breeze that passes over;  
In the hollow of my hand  
Are its water and its sand,  
And its deepest retreat  
Lies high in my thoughts.

The trains never stop to look at it; yet I imagine that the engineers, firemen, brakemen, and those passengers with season tickets who see it often, are better for having done so. The engineer does not forget at night—or at least his nature does not—that he has glimpsed this scene of serenity and purity at least once during the day. Even if seen only once, it helps to wash away State-street and the engine’s soot. Someone suggested it be called “God’s Drop.”

I have mentioned that Walden has no visible inlet or outlet, but, on one hand, it is distantly and indirectly connected with Flint’s Pond, which is at a higher elevation, by a chain of small ponds coming from that direction, and on the other hand, directly and obviously with Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which, in another geological age, it may have flowed—and, with a little digging (which God forbid), it could be made to flow there again. If, by living so reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods for so long, Walden has gained such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the relatively impure waters of Flint’s Pond should ever mingle with it, or that it should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean waves?

Flint’s, or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our largest lake and inland sea, is about a mile east of Walden. It is much larger, said to cover one hundred and ninety-seven acres, and has more fish; but it is comparatively shallow, and not exceptionally pure. I often walked through the woods there for recreation. It was worth the trip just to feel the wind blow freely on your face, see the waves run, and recall the life of mariners. I went chestnut hunting there in the fall, on windy days, when the nuts dropped into the water and washed up to my feet; and once, as I crept along its reedy shore, the fresh spray blowing in my face, I found the decaying wreck of a boat—the sides gone, barely more than the outline of its flat bottom left among the rushes; yet its shape was sharply defined, as if it were a large decayed pad, with veins. It was as impressive a wreck as one might find on a sea-shore, and carried just as much moral. By now it is mere plant matter and indistinguishable pond shore, through which rushes and flags have grown up. I used to admire the ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end of the pond, made firm and hard under the feet of the wader by the water’s pressure, with rushes growing in lines, like Indian file, waving in ranks behind one another, almost as if the waves had planted them. There, too, I have found many curious balls, apparently composed of fine grass or roots—pipewort, perhaps—ranging from half an inch to four inches in diameter, perfectly spherical. These roll back and forth in the shallow water on sandy ground and are sometimes tossed on the shore. They are made either entirely of grass or with a bit of sand at the core. At first, you might think they were formed by the action of the waves, like a pebble; yet the smallest are made from similarly coarse materials, half an inch long, and they are produced only during a certain season. Further, I suspect the waves do not so much build them as wear down some material that already had consistency. They stay intact when dry for an indefinite period.

*Flint’s Pond!* Such is the poverty of our naming. What right did the unclean and foolish farmer, whose farm bordered this sky-colored water and whose shores he has ruthlessly stripped, have to give it his name? Some miser, who preferred the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who even considered the wild ducks that landed upon it as trespassers; whose fingers had become crooked and hard, talon-like, from a lifelong habit of grasping greedily. So it is not named after me. I do not go there to see or hear of him; he never *saw* it, never swam in it, never loved or protected it, never spoke a kind word about it or thanked God for its creation. Instead, let it be named for the fish that swim in it, the wild birds or animals that visit it, the wildflowers on its banks, or some wild man or child whose story is intertwined with its own. Not for the man whose only claim to it was a deed from a like-minded neighbor or the legislature—someone who cared only for its monetary value, whose presence perhaps cursed the whole shore, who stripped and exhausted the land around it and would have done the same to the water within, who regretted only that it was not a hayfield 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 power his mill, and it was no *privilege* for him to look upon it. I do not respect his labors—his farm, where everything has a price; who would sell the landscape, who would sell his God, if he could earn something from it; who goes to market *for* his god as it is; whose farm grows nothing for free, whose fields bear no crops, meadows no flowers, trees no fruits, except for dollars; who cares nothing for the beauty of his fruits, not seeing them as ripe until they are turned into money. Give me the kind of poverty that appreciates true wealth. Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion to how poor they are—poor farmers. A model farm!—where the house sits like a fungus on a muck heap, with rooms for men, horses, oxen, and swine, clean and dirty, all next to each other. Stocked with men! A giant grease spot, reeking of manure and buttermilk, under a “high state of cultivation,” fertilized by the hearts and brains of men! As if one grew their potatoes in the churchyard! Such is a model farm.

No, no; if the fairest parts of the landscape are to be named after men, let it be the noblest and most worthy men. Our lakes should have names as true as the Icarian Sea, where “still the shore” a “brave attempt resounds.”

Goose Pond, of small size, is on my way to Flint’s; Fair-Haven, a widening of Concord River, said to cover about seventy acres, lies a mile to the southwest; and White Pond, about forty acres in size, 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, all the year, they grind whatever grist I take to them.

Since the woodcutters, the railroad, and I myself have profaned Walden, perhaps the most charming, if not the most beautiful, in all our lakes is White Pond—a mediocre name for its commonness, whether taken from the purity of its waters or the color of its sands. In these and other ways, though, it is a lesser twin to Walden. They are so alike that you would think they must be connected underground. It has the same stony shore; its waters are of the same tint. Like at Walden, in heavy summer weather, looking down through the woods into some of its bays—not so deep that their bottoms' reflection doesn’t show—the water glows a misty bluish-green or glaucous shade. Many years ago, I used to go there to collect sand by the cartload, to make sandpaper, and have continued to visit since. One who frequents it suggests calling it Virid Lake. Perhaps Yellow-Pine Lake would suit, for the following reason. About fifteen years ago, you could see the top of a pitch-pine—the kind known as yellow-pine here, though it's not a true separate species—rising from deep water, many rods from the shore. Some believed the pond had dropped, and this was a remnant of the original forest. I found that, as early as 1792, a “Topographical Description of the Town of Concord,” written by a local and included in the Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, said this about White Pond: “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 1849, I spoke to the man who lives closest to the pond in Sudbury, who said he removed the tree ten or fifteen years earlier. As best as he recalled, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep. It was winter, and he had spent the morning cutting ice, and decided that afternoon, with help from neighbors, to pull out the old yellow-pine. He sawed a channel in the ice to the shore, and hauled it over, along, and out onto the ice with oxen; but, before getting far, he was surprised to find it was upside down, the stumps of its branches pointing down, the small end stuck fast in the sandy bottom. It was about a foot thick at the big end, and he had hoped for a good saw-log, but it was so rotten it was only fit for firewood, if that. He still had some of it in his shed. There were axe marks and woodpecker holes on the bottom. He thought it may have been a dead tree on the shore, blown into the pond, and after the top became waterlogged, but the bottom still dry and floatable, it drifted out and then—upside down—sank. His father, then eighty years old, could not recall the time when it had not been there. Several fairly large logs can still be seen lying on the bottom, where, thanks to the wavy surface, they look like huge water snakes moving.

This pond has seldom been disturbed by a boat, for there is little to tempt a fisherman. Instead of the white lily, which needs mud, or the usual sweet flag, the blue flag (*Iris versicolor*) grows sparsely in its pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shore, attracting hummingbirds in June; and the color of its bluish leaves and blooms—and especially their reflections—are strikingly in harmony with the water’s glaucous color.

White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the earth’s surface—Lakes of Light. If they were frozen solid and small enough to hold, perhaps they would have been carried away by slaves, like gemstones, to decorate the crowns of emperors; but being liquid, generous, and preserved for us and our descendants forever, we overlook them and chase after the Kohinoor diamond. They are too pure to have any market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! We never learned meanness from them. How much fairer than the puddle before the farmer’s door, where his ducks swim! Here, the wild ducks come, clean. Nature has no human inhabitant who truly appreciates her. The birds, with their plumage and songs, are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden unites with the wild, rich beauty of Nature? She thrives best alone, far from the towns where people live. Talk of heaven! You disgrace earth.

## Baker Farm

Sometimes I wandered to pine groves, standing like temples or like fleets at sea, fully rigged with wavy branches, shimmering with light—so soft, green, and shady that the Druids might have left their oaks to worship there; or to the cedar woods beyond Flint’s Pond, where the trees, covered with pale blue berries and rising higher and higher, seem fit to stand before Valhalla, and creeping juniper covers the ground with fruit-filled wreaths; or to swamps where the usnea lichen hangs in garlands from white-spruce trees, and toadstools—round tables of the swamp gods—cover the floor, and even more beautiful fungi decorate the stumps like butterflies or shells, nature’s winkles; where the swamp-pink and dogwood grow, the red alder-berry glows like imps’ eyes, the waxwork coils and crushes even the hardest woods, and the wild-holly berries make the beholder forget home with their beauty; dazzled and tempted by other unnamed wild forbidden fruits, too beautiful for human taste. Rather than calling on some scholar, I made frequent visits to particular trees, rare in this region—standing alone in a distant pasture, or deep within woods or swamps, or on a hilltop: such as the black birch, of which we have a few handsome two-foot-diameter examples; its cousin, the yellow birch, with its loose golden bark, fragrant, like the former; the beech, so neatly shaped and beautifully lichen-painted, perfect in every detail—of which, apart from scattered examples, I know only one small grove of sizable trees in the township, said by some to have grown from beechnuts spread by pigeons that were once baited nearby; it’s worth splitting this wood just to see the silver grain sparkle; the bass; the hornbeam; the *Celtis occidentalis*, or false elm, of which we have only one well-grown; some towering pine, a “shingle tree,” or a more perfect hemlock than usual, standing like a pagoda amid the forest; and many more I could mention. These were the shrines I visited winter and summer.

One time, I happened to stand right at the base of a rainbow’s arch, filling the lower part of the air, tinting the grass and leaves all around and dazzling me as though I looked through colored crystal. It was a lake of rainbow light, in which for a short time I lived like a dolphin. Had it lasted longer, it might have colored my work and my life. Walking along the railroad embankment, I would marvel at the halo of light around my shadow, and liked to fancy myself one of the chosen. A visitor once told me that the shadows of some Irishmen ahead of him lacked such a halo; that only natives had such distinction. Benvenuto Cellini writes in his memoirs that, after a certain terrifying dream or vision during his imprisonment in the castle of St. Angelo, a bright light appeared around the shadow of his head at morning and evening, in both Italy and France, and was especially visible when the grass was wet with dew. This was likely the same phenomenon I have mentioned, often seen in the morning, but also at other times, even by moonlight. Though it is always there, it is not commonly noticed, and in the case of an excitable mind like Cellini’s, it would be enough to fuel superstition. He also says he showed it to very few. But are not those truly distinguished who realize they are noticed at all?

One afternoon I set out to go fishing at Fair-Haven, through the woods, to supplement my limited supply of vegetables. My path took me through Pleasant Meadow, part of the Baker Farm—that refuge which a poet has since celebrated, 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 had thought about living there before I moved to Walden. I would “hook” the apples, leap over the brook, and scare off the musquash and the trout. It was one of those afternoons that seem endlessly long ahead of you, when many things could happen—a big part of our natural life—though by the time I started out, the afternoon was already half over. Along the way, a shower appeared suddenly and forced me to wait half an hour beneath a pine, piling boughs over my head and using my handkerchief as a makeshift shelter. When I finally made a single cast over the pickerel-weed, standing waist-deep in the water, a cloud’s shadow suddenly fell over me, and the thunder rumbled so strongly I could do nothing but listen. “The gods must be proud,” I thought, “with such forked lightning to chase away a poor unarmed fisherman.” So, I hurried to the nearest hut for shelter, which stood half a mile from any road but much closer to the pond, and had long since been abandoned:

“And here a poet builded,  
    In the completed years,  
For behold a trivial cabin  
    That to destruction steers.”

So the Muse imagines. But as I found, it was now home to John Field, an Irishman, his wife, and several children. There was the broad-faced boy who helped his father at work and now came running in from the bog to escape the rain, down to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant perched on its father’s knee as if in a noble’s palace, looking out from its home amid wet and hunger at the stranger, with the innocence and boldness of infancy, as if it were the last of a noble line and the hope and center of the world, instead of the poor, starving child of John Field. We sat together under the part of the roof that leaked the least, while it poured and thundered outside. I had sat there many times in years past, before the ship had even been built that would bring his family to America. John Field was clearly an honest, hard-working, yet shiftless man. His wife, too, was brave enough to cook so many consecutive meals in the depths of that tall stove—her round, greasy face and bare chest, always hoping to one day improve her lot; ever with a mop in hand, but no sign of its effect anywhere. Even the chickens, who had also come in for shelter from the rain, roamed the room like members of the family—so humanized, I thought, that they would never roast well. They looked me in the eye or pecked at my shoe, almost knowingly. Meanwhile, my host told me his story: how hard he worked “bogging” for a neighboring farmer, digging up a meadow with a spade or bog hoe for ten dollars an acre, with the use of the land and manure for one year; and how his broad-faced son cheerfully worked beside him, not realizing how poor a bargain his father had made. I tried to offer my experience, telling him that he was one of my closest neighbors, and that I, too, who came here just to fish and look like a loafer, was earning my living just as he was. I told him I lived in a warm, clean, and well-built house that cost less than the annual rent of such a ruin as his; that if he wanted to, he could build himself a palace in a month or two. I explained that I did not use tea, coffee, butter, milk, or fresh meat, and therefore didn’t need to work to pay for them; since I didn’t work hard, I didn’t need to eat heavily, so my food cost me very little. But because he started with tea, coffee, butter, milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and after working hard, he needed to eat heavily again to recover his strength. So, it ended up as broad as it was long—actually, it was worse, for he was dissatisfied and wasted his life in the process. Yet, he had counted it as progress, coming to America, that here you could get tea, coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are free to live in such a way that you can do without these things, and where the state does not force you to bear the costs—whether direct or indirect—of the slavery, war, and extra expenses resulting from them. For I purposely spoke to him as if he were a philosopher, or aspired to be one. I would be happy if all the meadows on earth were left wild, if that’s what would happen when people began to redeem themselves. A man doesn’t need to study history to learn what’s best for his own development. But, alas, helping an Irishman “cultivate” himself is a project that takes a sort of moral bog hoe. I pointed out that with all his bogging, he needed thick boots and sturdy clothes that wore out quickly and got dirty fast, while I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost much less—though he might think I was dressed like a gentleman (which was not true). In an hour or two, without working, just for recreation, I could catch all the fish I wanted for two days, or earn enough money to support me for a week. If he and his family chose to live simply, they could all pick huckleberries in the summer for enjoyment. John sighed at this, and his wife stood, hands on hips, both of them seeming to wonder if they had enough capital to start such a life, or the arithmetic to keep it going. For them, it was like sailing without a compass; they couldn’t see how to reach such a place. So, I suppose, they continue to face life bravely in their own way, taking it head-on, lacking the skill to break through its tough exterior, and conquering it step by step—trying to wrestle with it roughly, like handling a thistle. But they face overwhelming odds—living, poor John Field, alas, without the arithmetic—and failing because of it.

“Do you ever fish?” I asked. “Oh yes, I catch a mess now and then when I have time to spare; I get good perch.” “What do you use for bait?” “I catch shiners with worms, and use them to catch the perch.” “You’d better go now, John,” said his wife, her face bright and hopeful; but John hesitated.

The rain had stopped and a rainbow above the eastern woods promised a fair evening, so I took my leave. As I was leaving, I asked for a drink, hoping to see the bottom of the well to complete my observation of the place; but there, sadly, there are only shallows and quicksands, a broken rope, and an irretrievable bucket. After much searching and delay, an appropriate pot was selected, the water was strained (or seemed to be), and after consultation, passed to the thirsty guest—not yet allowed to cool or settle. Such gruel sustains life here, I thought. So, closing my eyes and skimming off the floating specks with a carefully directed undercurrent, I drank the heartiest toast I could to genuine hospitality. I am not particular in such cases when good manners are at stake.

As I left the Irishman’s hut after the rain, and made my way back to the pond, my eagerness to catch pickerel—wading through lonely meadows and bogs, in wild and desolate places—seemed, for a moment, a trivial pursuit for someone who had gone to school and college. But as I ran down the hill toward the reddening west, with the rainbow over my shoulder and faint tinkling sounds drifting through the fresh air from somewhere unknown, my Good Genius seemed to say: Go, fish and hunt far and wide, every day—farther and wider—and rest by many brooks and hearths without anxiety. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth. Rise early and free from worry, and seek adventures. Let noon find you by other lakes, and let night come upon you wherever you call home. No fields are broader than these; no games here are less worthy. Grow wild, in your own way, like these sedges and ferns, which will never become English hay. Let the thunder roll—what does it matter if it threatens to ruin the farmers’ crops? That’s not its message to you. Take shelter beneath the clouds while the farmers run for their carts and sheds. Let earning a living be not your trade, but your sport. Enjoy the land, but don’t own it. From lack of ambition and faith, people stay where they are, buying and selling, living their lives like serfs.

O Baker Farm!

“Landscape where the richest element  
Is a little sunshine innocent.”

“No one runs to revel  
On thy rail-fenced lea.”

“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!”

People head home tamely at night only from the next field or street, where their own echoes linger and their lives shrink because they keep breathing the same air as before; in the morning and evening, their shadows stretch farther than their feet have walked that day. We should return home from far away each night, from adventures, dangers, and discoveries, bringing back fresh experience and character.

Before I reached the pond, a new impulse had drawn John Field outside, with a changed outlook, setting aside his “bogging” before sunset. But he, poor fellow, only managed to disturb a couple of fish while I caught a decent number, and he said it was just his luck; though, when we switched seats in the boat, our luck switched too. Poor John Field!—I hope he doesn’t read this unless it will do him some good—trying to live by some old, handed-down, country way in this raw, new country—to catch perch with shiners. It can be good bait sometimes, I admit. With a horizon entirely his own, yet he remains poor, born into poverty, inheriting the ways and hardships of his Irish ancestors, destined not to rise in the world—he nor his children—until their bog-wading feet sprout the wings of Mercury.

## Higher Laws

As I returned home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, now that it was quite dark, I caught sight of a woodchuck sneaking across my path. I felt a strange thrill of primal delight and was strongly tempted to seize and eat him raw; not because I was hungry, except for that wildness he embodied. Once or twice, while living at the pond, I found myself roaming the woods like a half-starved hound, with strange abandon, seeking some kind of game I could eat, and no food would have been too wild for me. The wildest places had become oddly familiar. I found in myself—and still do—an instinct toward a higher, or so-called spiritual life, as most men do; and another toward a primitive, raw, and savage one. I respect both. I love the wild no less than the good. The wildness and adventure of fishing still appeal to me. I sometimes like to take a strong hold on life and spend my day as animals do. Perhaps I owe it to this activity, and to hunting in my youth, that I became closely acquainted with Nature. These introduce us early to, and keep us in, settings we otherwise would hardly know at that age. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives outdoors, are in a unique way part of Nature themselves and are often better positioned to observe her in the gaps between their pursuits than even philosophers or poets, who come with expectations. Nature is not afraid to reveal herself to them. The traveler on the prairie is naturally a hunter; at the headwaters of the Missouri and Columbia, a trapper; and at the Falls of St. Mary, a fisherman. The pure traveler only learns from second-hand accounts and is a poor authority. We are most interested when science confirms what those people already know through practice or instinct, as that alone is genuine *human experience*.

Those who say the Yankee has few amusements, because there are fewer public holidays and fewer games for boys and men than in England, are mistaken. Here, older, more solitary amusements like hunting and fishing have not yet given way to the newer forms. Almost every New England boy of my generation shouldered a gun between ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, as an English nobleman's preserves are, but were more boundless than even those of a savage. No wonder, then, that he rarely stayed to play on the common. But now this is already changing—not because of more humanity, but because of increased scarcity of game; for strangely, perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend of the animals he hunts, not excepting the Humane Society.

Moreover, when at the pond, I sometimes wanted fish for variety. I truly fished out of the same necessity as the original fishermen. Any humanity I mustered against it was artificial and more about my philosophy than my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, as I had long ago felt differently about shooting, and had sold my gun before moving to the woods. Not that I was less humane than others, but I didn't feel my emotions were much affected. I didn't pity the fish or the worms. It was a matter of habit. As for shooting, in the last years I carried a gun, my excuse was that I was studying ornithology and sought only new or rare birds. But I now think there is a better way to study ornithology. It requires such closer attention to birds' habits, that for that reason alone, I was willing to give up the gun. Yet, despite objections on the grounds of humanity, I doubt if any sports as valuable are ever substituted for these; and when friends anxiously asked me whether they should allow their boys to hunt, I answered yes—recalling it was one of the best parts of my own education—*make* them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, great hunters at last, so that they find no game large enough for them in this or any other earthly wilderness; hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus I agree with Chaucer’s nun, who

“gave not of the text a plucked hen  
That says hunters are not holy men.”

There is a time in the history of both the individual and the race when the hunters are the “best men,” as the Algonquins called them. We can't help but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, but his education is sadly lacking. This was my answer for those boys intent on this pursuit, trusting they would soon outgrow it. No truly humane person, past the thoughtless age of childhood, will wantonly kill any creature that holds its life by the same right as his own. The hare in distress cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual philanthropic distinctions.

This is often the young man’s introduction to the forest and to his most original self. He goes at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he finds his real calling, maybe as a poet or naturalist, and leaves behind the gun and fishing pole. Most men remain forever young in this respect. In some countries, a hunting parson is not rare. Such a man might make a good shepherd's dog but is far from being the Good Shepherd. I have noticed that, besides wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or similar work, the only activity that ever detained my fellow-citizens at Walden Pond for half a day, with one exception, was fishing. Usually, they didn't think they were lucky or well paid for their time unless they caught a long line of fish, even though they could see the pond the whole time. They might visit a thousand times before the desire to fish would settle, leaving their purpose pure; but no doubt this purifying process would go on each time. The governor and his council barely remember the pond, for they fished there as boys; but now they are too dignified and old for that, and so know it no more forever. Yet even they expect to go to heaven in the end. If the legislature notices the pond, it’s mostly to regulate the number of hooks allowed there; but they know nothing of the hook with which to angle for the pond itself, baited with the legislature. So, even in civilized societies, the growing man passes through the hunter stage.

In recent years, I have often found that fishing lowers my self-respect. I have tried it many times. I have skill at it, and, like many, a natural instinct for it that revives from time to time, but afterward, I always feel it would have been better not to have fished. I think I don't mistake this. It is a faint suggestion, but so are the first streaks of dawn. Undeniably, this instinct in me belongs to the lower creatures; yet, each year, I am less a fisherman, though not more humane or wise. At present, I am no fisherman at all. Yet I know that if I lived in the wilderness, I would be tempted to become a serious fisherman and hunter again. Besides, there is something essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh, and I began to see where housework starts, and why so much effort is spent to keep tidy and respectable each day, and to keep the house fresh and free from bad smells and sights. Being my own butcher, scullion, and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the food was served, I can speak from unusually wide experience. My practical objection to animal food was its uncleanness; and, besides, when I caught, cleaned, cooked, and ate my fish, they seemed not to have truly nourished me. It was minor and unnecessary and cost more effort than it was worth. A bit of bread or a few potatoes would have sufficed, with less trouble and mess. Like many of my peers, I have rarely, for years, eaten animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc.; not because I traced ill effects to them, but because they didn't appeal to my imagination. The dislike for animal food is not the result of experience, but an instinct. It seemed nobler to live simply and sparely in many ways; and though I never did so fully, I went far enough to satisfy my imagination. I believe that every earnest man seeking to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has especially tended to avoid animal food, or too much of any food. A noteworthy fact, as stated by entomologists—Kirby and Spence note—that “some insects in their perfect state, though equipped for eating, make no use of those organs;” and they declare as “a general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat much less than as larvæ. The voracious caterpillar when transformed into a butterfly,”...”and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly,” are content with a drop or two of honey or some sweet liquid. The abdomen under the wings of the butterfly still hints at the larva. This is the delicacy that tempts his insect-eating fate. The big eater is in the larva state; and there are whole nations still in that condition, nations lacking imagination, whose large bellies give them away.

It is hard to provide and prepare such a simple and clean diet that it doesn't offend the imagination; but this, I think, should be nourished when we feed the body, and both should sit at the same table. Yet, perhaps this is possible. The fruits, eaten in moderation, need not shame our appetites or interrupt our noblest pursuits. But add an extra seasoning to your dish, and it will poison you. Living on rich cookery isn't worth it. Most would be embarrassed if caught preparing exactly the same dinner, whether animal or vegetable, that others prepare for them daily. Until this changes, we are not civilized, and, if we call ourselves gentlemen and ladies, are not truly men and women. This certainly suggests what should be changed. It may be pointless to ask why the imagination can’t be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am convinced that it can't. Is it not shameful that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live much by preying on other animals; but it's a miserable way—as anyone who tries to snare rabbits or slaughter lambs can see—and he who teaches mankind to stick to a more innocent and healthy diet will be a real benefactor. Whatever my own habits may be, I am sure that, as humanity gradually improves, people will stop eating animals, just as the savage tribes stopped eating each other when they met more civilized people.

If anyone listens to even the faintest suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he will see not to what extremes—or even madness—it may carry him; yet as he grows more determined and faithful, that is the path he will follow. The lightest genuine objection a healthy man feels will, in time, outweigh the arguments and traditions of society. No one has ever followed his genius and been misled. Even if the result was physical weakness, perhaps no one can say the consequences should be regretted, for those consequences were a life lived according to higher principles. If the day and night bring you joy and life gives off a fragrance like flowers and sweet herbs, is more lively, more celestial, more immortal—then that is true success. All of nature is your congratulations, and you have reason to bless yourself each moment. The greatest gains and values are least likely to be appreciated. We easily begin to doubt they exist. We quickly forget them. Yet they are the highest realities. Perhaps the most amazing, most real facts are never communicated from one person to another. The real harvest of my daily life is as intangible and indescribable as the colors of dawn or evening. It is a little stardust caught, a piece of the rainbow I've grabbed.

For myself, I was never unusually squeamish; I could, if necessary, eat a fried rat with good appetite. I am glad to have drunk only water for such a long time, for the same reason I prefer the clear sky to an opium-eater’s paradise. I would like to stay sober always; yet there are countless degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise person; wine is less noble; and imagine spoiling the hopefulness of a morning with a cup of hot coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! How low I fall when I am tempted! Even music can be intoxicating. Such apparently harmless things ruined Greece and Rome and may ruin England and America. Of all intoxications, who would not prefer to be drunk on the air we breathe? I have found the most serious drawback to long, coarse labor is that it forces me to eat and drink coarsely too. Yet, to be honest, I am now a bit less strict in these matters. I bring less religious feeling to the table, say no blessing—not because I am wiser, but, regrettably, because I have grown more coarse and indifferent with age. Perhaps these questions are only deeply considered during youth, as is often said of poetry. My practice is “nowhere,” my opinion is here. Still, I am far from thinking of myself as one of those special people referred to in the Vedas when it says, “he who has true faith in the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists” (that is, does not need to ask what his food is or who prepares it); and even then, a Hindu commentator notes, the Vedanta limits this privilege to “the time of distress.”

Who hasn’t sometimes felt deep satisfaction from food in which appetite played no part? I have been moved to realize that I owed some new mental insight to the sense of taste, that I was inspired through my palate, that berries eaten on a hillside once fed my genius. “When the soul is not mistress of herself,” says Thseng-tseu, “one looks and does not see; one listens and does not hear; one eats and does not know the flavor of food.” He who can truly taste his food can never be a glutton; he who cannot, can only be one. A Puritan might go to his brown-bread crust with as crude an appetite as any alderman to his turtle soup. Not the food that goes into a man’s mouth defiles him, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It’s neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual pleasure; when what is eaten isn’t to support the body or lift the spirit, but food for the worms that own us. If the hunter enjoys mud-turtles, muskrats, and other wild fare, the refined lady delights in jelly made from calf's feet or sardines from abroad, and they are equal. He goes to the mill-pond, she to her preserve jar. The wonder is that they, that you and I, can live this slimy, animal life, eating and drinking.

Our whole life is profoundly moral. There is never a moment’s truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only unfailing investment. In the music of the harp that trembles through the world, insisting on this is what moves us. The harp is the wandering advertiser for the Universe’s Insurance Company, upholding its laws, and our small goodness is all the payment we make. Though youth may grow indifferent, the laws of the universe are not and always side with the most sensitive. Listen for reproof in every breeze—you will find it, and unfortunate is he who cannot hear it. We cannot touch a string or press a key without a charming moral piercing us. Even irksome noises, heard at a distance, are musical—a proud, sweet satire on the pettiness of our lives.

We are aware of an animal nature in us that awakens as our higher nature sleeps. It is reptilian and sensual, and perhaps it can never be fully cast out, like the worms that, even in life and health, inhabit our bodies. We may withdraw from it, but not change its nature. I fear it may possess a certain vitality of its own; we may be well, yet not pure. The other day, I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with healthy, white teeth and tusks, which suggested there is an animal strength separate from the spiritual. This animal succeeded by other means than self-control and purity. “That in which men differ from brute beasts,” says Mencius, “is a very slight thing; the common people lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully.” Who knows what life would result if we attained purity? If I knew a wise man who could teach me purity, I would seek him out at once. “Control over our passions, over the body’s senses, and good actions are declared by the Vedas to be essential as the mind approaches God.” Still, the spirit can sometimes pervade and rule every part of the body, transforming what outwardly seems the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are lax, saps and makes us impure, when we are self-controlled invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of humanity; and what we call Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are just different fruits of chastity. Man draws close to God when purity clears the way. At times, our purity uplifts, and our impurity drags us down. Blessed is he who is certain that the animal is fading away in him day by day, and the divine is being established. Perhaps everyone has reason to be ashamed of the crude, animal nature they're tied to. I fear we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs—divine beings allied to beasts, creatures of appetite—and that in some sense, even our life is our disgrace.—

“How happy’s he who has rightly placed  
His beasts and cleared his mind of forests!

Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and every beast,  
And is not ass himself to all the rest!  
Otherwise, man is not only the herd of swine,  
But he is also those devils that drove  
Them into frenzy, and made them worse.”

All sensuality is the same, though it takes many forms; all purity is also one. No matter if a man eats, drinks, cohabits, or sleeps sensually—it’s all the same appetite, and we need only observe one such act to know how sensual a person is. The impure person cannot act or even sit with purity. When the animal is chased from one opening in his burrow, he emerges from another. If you want to be chaste, you must be temperate. What is chastity? How does one know he is chaste? He cannot know. We talk about this virtue only because of rumors we've heard. From effort come wisdom and purity; from laziness, ignorance and sensuality. In a student, sensuality is a lazy mental state. An unclean person is always a lazy one, someone who sits by the stove, lets the sun shine on him as he lies there, relaxing though not tired. If you want to avoid filth and all sins, work hard—even if it means cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to conquer, but she must be conquered. What good is it to be a Christian if you aren't purer than the heathen, if you don't deny yourself more, if you aren't more religious? I know of many so-called heathen religions whose teachings fill the reader with shame and urge him to new efforts, even if only to perform rituals.

I hesitate to say these things, but not because of the topic—I don't care how direct my *words* are—but because I cannot speak of these things without showing my own impurity. We freely discuss one kind of sensuality, but are silent about another. We are so degraded we cannot even speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier times, in other countries, every function was spoken of respectfully and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindu lawgiver, no matter how offensive it may seem to modern taste. He instructs how to eat, drink, cohabit, relieve oneself, and so on—dignifying what is lowly, and not making false excuses by calling such things trivial.

Every man builds a temple—his own body—for the god he worships, following his own unique style, and he can’t avoid this by working with marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh, blood, and bones. Any act of nobility immediately refines a man’s features, while any meanness or sensuality tends to coarsen them.

John Farmer sat at his door one September evening after a hard day's work, his mind still lingering on his labor. After bathing, he sat down to restore his intellect. It was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors feared there might be a frost. He hadn't spent much time following his train of thought when he heard someone playing a flute, a sound that matched his mood. Still, he thought about his work, but the weight of his thoughts was that, although work kept running through his head and he found himself planning and contriving against his will, it truly concerned him very little. It was no more meaningful than the dead skin he constantly sheds. But the notes of the flute reached his ears from a different world than that in which he worked, and inspired certain dormant faculties within him. They gently erased the street, the village, and even the state in which he lived. A voice seemed to say—Why do you stay here and live this low, toiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over fields other than these.—But how to leave this situation and actually move to that better place? All he could think to do was to practice some new discipline, let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever-increasing respect.

## Brute Neighbors

Sometimes I had a companion while fishing, who crossed the village to reach my house from the opposite side of the town, so that catching dinner became as much a social activity as eating it.

*Hermit.* I wonder what the world is doing now. For the past three hours, I haven't heard even a locust in the sweet-fern. The pigeons are all asleep on their roosts—not a flutter from them. Was that a farmer’s noon horn I heard a moment ago, coming from beyond the woods? The hands are coming in for boiled salt beef, cider, and Indian bread. Why do men worry themselves so much? If you don’t eat, you don’t have to work. I wonder how much they've harvested. Who would want to live there, where you can never think because of Bose barking? And oh, housekeeping!—keeping bright the devil’s doorknobs, scrubbing his tubs on such a bright day! Better not keep a house at all. Maybe live in a hollow tree—and then what about morning calls and dinner parties? Only a woodpecker tapping. Oh, they swarm; it’s too warm in the sun there; they are thrust too far into life for my liking. I have water from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf.—Hark! I hear rustling leaves. Is it some underfed village hound giving in to the instincts of the chase? Or the lost pig said to be in these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain? Whatever it is, it’s coming quickly; my sumachs and sweetbriers are trembling.—Ah, Mr. Poet, is that you? How are you liking the world today?

*Poet.* Look at those clouds—how they hang! That’s the most remarkable thing I’ve seen all day. There’s nothing like it in old paintings, nothing like it in other lands—except maybe when we were off the coast of Spain. That’s a true Mediterranean sky. I thought, since I have to earn my living and haven’t eaten today, that I might go fishing. That’s really the right job for poets. It’s the only trade I’ve learned. Let’s go.

*Hermit.* I can’t resist. My brown bread will soon be gone. I’ll gladly come with you soon, but I’m just finishing a serious meditation. I think I’m almost done. Let me be alone for a while. But, so we’re not delayed, you can dig the bait in the meantime. Angle-worms are rare in this area, where the soil’s never been enriched with manure; their kind is nearly extinct. Digging the bait is almost as much fun as catching the fish, if you aren’t too hungry; and today, you can have that part all to yourself. I would suggest you try setting the spade down by those ground-nuts, where you see the johnswort waving. I think I can promise you one worm for every three sods you turn up if you search carefully in the grass roots, as if you were weeding. Or, if you’d rather go farther, that’s fine, for I’ve found that the number of good worms increases almost in proportion to the square of the distance.

*Hermit alone.* Let me see—where was I? I think I was nearly in the right frame of mind; the world lay about me at just this angle. Should I go to heaven or go fishing? If I end this meditation soon, will I ever have another opportunity as sweet? I was as close to dissolving into the essence of things as I’ve ever been. I’m afraid I won’t get my thoughts back. If whistling would help, I would try it. When thoughts come as an offer, is it wise to say, “I’ll think about it”? My thoughts left no track, and I can’t find the way back. What was I thinking about? It was a very hazy day. I’ll try these three sayings of Confucius; maybe they’ll help bring that state back. I don’t know whether it was melancholy or the start of ecstasy. Note to self: There’s never more than one opportunity of a kind.

*Poet.* How’s it going, Hermit, am I too early? I’ve got just thirteen whole worms, plus a few that are undersized or imperfect; they’ll do for the smaller fish—they don’t hide the hook as much. Those village worms are way too large; a shiner could eat one without even finding the skewer.

*Hermit.* Well then, let’s get going. Shall we head to the Concord? The sport’s good there if the water’s not too high.

Why is it exactly these objects we see that form a world? Why does man have just these kinds of animals for neighbors, as if nothing but a mouse could fill this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have used animals for their highest purpose, as they are all beasts of burden in some way—each carrying a part of our thoughts.

The mice in my house weren’t the usual sort—the kind said to have been brought into the country—but a wild native species, not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, who was quite interested. During my building, one had its nest under the house and, before I had laid the second floor or swept out the shavings, would come out at lunch time and pick up crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; it soon became familiar and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could easily climb the sides of the room with quick, squirrel-like motions. One day, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench, it ran up my clothes, along my sleeve, and around the paper holding my dinner, while I kept the latter close and played at hide-and-seek with it. Finally, when I held out a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, then cleaned its face and paws like a fly, and walked away.

A phoebe soon nested in my shed, and a robin, for protection, in a pine next to the house. In June, the partridge (*Tetrao umbellus*), a very shy bird, led her brood past my windows from the woods to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her actions proving she was the hen of the woods. The young scatter instantly at her signal when you approach, as if swept away by a whirlwind, and they look so much like the dry leaves and twigs that many a traveler has stepped right in the middle of a brood, hearing the old bird’s flapping, anxious calls and mewing, or seeing her trail her wings to catch your eye, never realizing they’re nearby. The parent will sometimes roll and spin before you in such a disorder that you can't, for a few moments, recognize the creature. The young will lie flat and still, often tucking their heads under a leaf, following only their mother's distant orders and refusing to run or give themselves away, regardless of your approach. You might even step on them or stare at them for a minute without realizing what they are. I've held them in my open hand at such times, and their only focus, loyal to their mother and their instinct, was to remain still without fear or trembling. Their instinct is so perfect that once, when I laid them on the leaves and one landed on its side, I found it in the same position ten minutes later. They aren’t naked and helpless like most other birds’ young, but more developed and precocious—even more so than chickens. The mature yet innocent look in their open, calm eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They represent not just the purity of childhood, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye wasn’t first made when the bird was born, but exists as old as the sky it reflects. No other gem like it exists in the woods. The traveler rarely looks into such a clear well. The ignorant or careless hunter often shoots the mother at such a time, leaving the young to predators or to gradually become part of the decaying leaves they resemble. It's said that chicks hatched by a hen will scatter at the first alarm and become lost, since they never hear their mother's call to gather again. These were my hens and chickens.

It's amazing how many creatures live wild and free, yet in secret, in the woods, sustaining themselves near towns, only suspected by hunters. How private the otter’s life must be here! He grows up to four feet long, as big as a small boy, possibly never glimpsed by a human. I used to see raccoons in the woods behind my house, and probably still heard them at night. Usually, after planting, I’d rest for an hour or two at noon in the shade, eating my lunch and reading by a spring sourced from under Brister’s Hill, about half a mile from my field. The way there was through hollow, grassy dips, filled with young pitch pines, leading to a larger wood near the swamp. In a secluded and shady spot beneath a big white pine, the ground was still clean and firm. I’d dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip a pail without stirring up mud—so I went there nearly every day in midsummer, when the pond grew warmest. The woodcock would lead her brood there, poking the mud for worms, flying just above them down the bank while they ran beneath. If she saw me, she’d leave her young, circle round me closer and closer, pretending to be hurt to distract me and get her young away, who’d already be trooping through the swamp as she directed. Sometimes I'd only hear the peeping of the young when I couldn’t see the mother. There, too, turtle-doves would sit above the spring, or flutter from bough to bough of the soft white pines above me. The red squirrel, busily running down the nearest branch, was particularly friendly and curious. Just sit still in a pleasant spot in the woods, and soon all its inhabitants come out for you to see.

I witnessed events less peaceful than these. One day, going to my woodpile—really more a pile of stumps—I saw two large ants, one red, the other much bigger and black, fiercely fighting. Once they’d grabbed onto each other, they never let go, rolling and struggling over the chips without stopping. Looking closer, I was surprised to see the chips covered with fighting ants—not a duel, but a battle between two races. The red ants always fought the black, often two reds to one black. Legions of these Myrmidons filled my woodpile, and the ground was already strewn with their dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle I’ve ever witnessed—the only battlefield I’ve walked while the fight raged—total war: the red republicans on one side, the black imperialists on the other. They fought everywhere, completely silent, and with more determination than any human soldiers. I watched one pair locked together in a small sunny valley amid the chips, ready to fight till sunset or death. The smaller red ant had gripped his enemy’s front tightly, and throughout their struggle never stopped gnawing at one of his feelers, having already removed the other; meanwhile, the stronger black ant threw him side to side, having already torn off several of the red ant’s limbs. They fought more tenaciously than bulldogs. Neither tried to retreat. Their battle cry was clearly conquer or die. Meanwhile, another red ant came along the hillside, apparently excited, whole and uninjured, perhaps not yet in the fight. Maybe his mother had told him to return with his shield or on it, or maybe he was some Achilles who had been holding in his anger and now came to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unfair fight from a distance—for the blacks were almost twice as large as the reds—ran up with quick steps until standing just half an inch from the fighters, then, seizing his moment, he jumped on the black ant and started attacking his right foreleg, letting his opponent deal with his own wounded parts. Thus, three were locked together as if a new kind of glue had been invented that outdid all others. By this time, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find their bands stationed atop a chip, playing their national anthems to encourage the struggling warriors. I felt myself getting excited, as if they were men. The more you think about it, the less difference you find. In fact, there’s not a battle in Concord’s—or even America’s—history that can compare for numbers or heroism. By scale and carnage, it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. The Battle of Concord: two killed, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Here, every ant was a Buttrick—"Fire! for God’s sake, fire!"—and thousands met the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There were no hired hands. I’m sure they fought for a principle, just as our ancestors did, and not just to avoid a tax; and the outcome of this battle will be just as significant and memorable to those it concerned as that of Bunker Hill.

I took the chip on which these three ants fought, carried it into my house, and put it under a tumbler on my window-sill to see what happened. Through a microscope, I saw the red ant still biting at the black ant’s leg, though his own chest was torn away, exposing his insides to the black ant, whose chest plate was apparently too thick for the red ant to break. The black ant’s eyes shone with the wildness only war brings. They wrestled for another half hour under the tumbler, and the next time I checked, the black soldier had bitten off the heads of his enemies, which now hung on either side of him like ghastly trophies. Still attached as ever, he was trying desperately, now missing feelers and most of a leg, to shake them off; which after another half hour he managed to do. I lifted the glass and he hobbled away, crippled, over the sill. Whether he survived his battle and spent the rest of his days in some ant version of a veterans’ hospital, I don’t know; but I doubted he’d work much after that. I never knew which side won, nor the cause of the war. Still, all day I felt as if my emotions had been stirred and troubled by watching the fury and slaughter of a true human battle right at my door.

Kirby and Spence tell us that ant battles have long been recorded, though they point out only Huber seems to have seen them firsthand lately. “Æneas Sylvius,” they say, “after giving a very detailed account of one fought stubbornly between two species on a pear tree trunk,” adds that “‘This action was fought during the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, a noted lawyer, who recounted the whole battle with the greatest accuracy.’ A similar fight between large and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the smaller ants won, buried their own dead, but left their giant enemy’s bodies for the birds. This was before the tyrant Christiern the Second was expelled from Sweden.” The battle I saw occurred during the presidency of Polk, five years before the Fugitive Slave Act passed.

Many a village dog, only fit for chasing a turtle in a cellar, lumbered through the woods without his master knowing, sniffing at old fox holes and woodchuck burrows; usually led by a nimble mongrel that would still inspire terror among wild animals. Sometimes far behind, barking at a squirrel that’s treed itself, then running off, shaking the bushes as if tracking some stray rodent. Once, I was surprised to see a cat walking along the rocky shore of the pond, since they rarely roam so far. The surprise was mutual. Still, the most domestic cat, used to lounging on a rug, seems entirely at home in the woods, and her sly, stealthy ways make her seem more native there than some of the wild inhabitants. Once when berrying, I found a wild cat with her kittens in the woods, all with arched backs and spitting fiercely at me just like their mother. A few years before I lived in the woods, there was a so-called “winged cat” in Lincoln, at Mr. Gilian Baker’s, the farmhouse nearest the pond. When I visited in June 1842, the cat was out hunting in the woods, as she often did (I'm not sure of the cat's sex, so I use the common pronoun), but the woman told me the cat had come to their neighborhood about a year earlier, in April, and had eventually been taken in. She was dark brownish-gray, with a white spot on her throat, white feet, and a big bushy tail like a fox. In winter, her fur grew thick and spread along her sides in stripes ten or twelve inches long and two and a half wide, with fur under her chin like a muff—the upper side loose, the underside felted—and in spring these “wings” dropped off. They gave me a pair of these “wings,” which I still have. There’s no sign of a membrane on them. Some thought she was part flying squirrel or another wild animal, which is possible, since naturalists say hybrids have been bred from martens and house cats. This would have been the right cat for me to keep, if I had done so; for why shouldn't a poet’s cat have wings as well as his horse?

In the fall, the loon (*Colymbus glacialis*) returned as usual, to molt and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I even got up. News of his arrival would set all the Mill-dam sportsmen on alert, in gigs and on foot, in groups, armed with patent rifles, conical bullets, and spyglasses. They moved through the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men for every loon. Some stationed themselves on one side of the pond, some on the other—since the poor bird couldn’t be everywhere; if he dove here, he had to come up there. But then the October wind rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the surface so no loon can be seen or heard, even while the hunters scan the water with spyglasses and fill the air with gunshots. The waves rise up as if to defend all waterfowl, and the hunters are forced to retreat to town, their shops, and unfinished chores. Still, they were often successful. When I went to fetch water in the morning, I often saw the stately bird sailing out of my cove only a few rods away. If I tried to catch up to him in a boat, just to see how he’d respond, he’d dive and vanish, sometimes not resurfacing until much later in the day. But I could outmatch him on the surface. He usually left in the rain.

As I paddled along the north shore on a still October afternoon—such days they settle on the lakes, like milkweed down, having searched in vain for a loon—a loon finally sailed from the shore toward the middle, just a few rods in front of me, laughed wildly, and gave himself away. I pursued with my paddle, and he dived—but when he surfaced, I was closer. He dove again, but I misjudged his path, and now we were fifty rods apart when he resurfaced, for I'd helped widen the gap. He laughed even longer and louder than before, with good reason. He maneuvered so cleverly I couldn’t get within half a dozen rods. Each time he surfaced, looking this way or that, he calmly surveyed the water and land, and always picked the widest area, the farthest from my boat, to reappear. It was surprising how quickly he decided and acted. He led me to the widest part of the pond and couldn’t be driven away. While he thought one thing, I tried to guess his next move. It was a game, played on the smooth pond: man against loon. Suddenly your opponent’s checker vanishes beneath the board; your challenge is to place yours nearest where he’ll appear again. Sometimes he’d come up unexpectedly, on my other side, seemingly having passed right under the boat. He was so tireless that after going his farthest, he’d immediately dive again—and I had no idea where he’d pop up, for he had time and skill to dive to the very bottom. It’s said loons have been caught eighty feet down in the New York lakes, set for trout—and Walden is even deeper. How shocked the fish must be to see such a strange visitor among them! Yet he seemed as sure of his route underwater as on the surface, and swam even faster down there. Once or twice I saw a ripple as he neared the surface, sticking just his head out to check, then instantly diving again. I found it was just as well to rest my oars and wait for him as to try to predict where he’d appear; for, again and again, while I strained my eyes one way, I’d suddenly hear his unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after showing such cleverness, did he always give himself away with that loud laugh at the surface? Didn’t his white chest show him off enough? He really was a foolish loon, I thought. Usually, I could at least hear the splash when he surfaced, and thus spot him. But even after an hour, he seemed just as energetic, diving just as eagerly, swimming even farther. It was striking how serenely he sailed away with his unruffled breast after surfacing, doing all the work with his webbed feet underneath. His usual call was that demonic laughter, somewhat like a waterfowl; but now and then, after outwitting me and coming up far away, he’d give a drawn-out, otherworldly howl, probably more similar to a wolf than to a bird—like a beast putting its muzzle to the ground and deliberately howling. That was his “looning”—perhaps the wildest sound heard here, echoing through the woods. I decided he was laughing at my efforts, sure of his skill. Even though the sky had grown overcast by now, the pond was so calm that I could see where he surfaced even without hearing him. His white breast, the still air, and the flat water all worked against him. At last, after surfacing fifty rods away, he gave one of those extended howls, as if calling on the god of loons for help, and suddenly a wind came from the east, rippling the water and blending the mist with rain, and I felt as though the loon’s prayer was heard and his god was angry at me. So I left him, vanishing in the distance on the stormy water.

For hours on autumn days, I watched the ducks skillfully tack and veer, keeping to the center of the pond, well away from the hunter; these are tricks they won’t need as much in the Louisiana bayous. When forced to rise, the ducks sometimes circled above the pond at a great height, easily able to spot nearby ponds and the river, appearing like black motes in the sky; and, although I believed they had long since left for other waters, they would return by gliding in a slanting flight of a quarter mile to settle on a remote part of the pond spared from disturbance. What else, besides safety, they found in sailing the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reasons I do.

## House-Warming

In October, I went gathering grapes in the river meadows, bringing back clusters that were more precious for their beauty and fragrance than their food value. There, too, I admired—but did not pick—the cranberries: small, waxen gems, dangling from meadow grass, pearly and red, which the farmer harvests with an ugly rake, tangling the smooth meadow, carelessly measuring only by the bushel and dollar, and sends the spoils to Boston and New York to be *jammed*—to please lovers of Nature there. In the same way, butchers rake bison tongues from prairie grass, indifferent to the battered and drooping plants. The barberry’s bright fruit fed my eyes as well; but I gathered a small supply of wild apples for coddling, which the owner and passersby had missed. When chestnuts ripened, I stored half a bushel for winter. It was exciting to wander through then-limitless chestnut woods of Lincoln—now sleeping beneath the railroad—with bag and stick in hand to open the burrs, often not waiting for the frost, enjoying the rustle of leaves and the sharp scolding of red squirrels and jays whose half-eaten nuts I sometimes stole, knowing their chosen burrs contained sound nuts. Sometimes I climbed and shook the trees. They also grew behind my house, and one large tree, almost shading it, was, when in flower, a bouquet that scented the whole neighborhood, but the squirrels and jays took most of its nuts; the latter arrived early, flocking in the morning to pluck out the nuts before they fell. I left those trees to them and sought out more distant woods made up entirely of chestnut. As far as they lasted, the nuts were a good bread substitute. Perhaps many other substitutes exist. One day, digging for fish-worms, I found the ground-nut (*Apios tuberosa*) on its string, the potato of the native peoples, almost mythical and which I had begun to doubt that I’d actually dug and eaten as a child as I’d claimed—perhaps I only dreamed it. Since then, I’d often seen its crumpled, red, velvety blossom supported by the stems of other plants, not knowing it was the same. Cultivation has nearly wiped it out. It tastes sweet, much like a frostbitten potato, and I found it better boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint promise from Nature that she would someday provide for and simply feed her own children here. In these times of fattened cattle and wide fields of grain, this humble root, once the *totem* of an Indian tribe, is nearly forgotten or known only by its flowering vine. Let wild Nature reclaim her place, and, perhaps, the delicate English grains will vanish before many foes. Without human care, even the crow might carry off the last seed of corn, returning it to the Indian’s God’s great cornfield in the southwest, where it is said to have come from. Yet the now nearly extinct ground-nut may revive and thrive in spite of frosts and wilderness, prove itself native, and reclaim its old importance as hunter’s food. Some Indian Ceres or Minerva was surely its inventor and donor; and when a new era of poetry begins here, its vines and strings of nuts may appear on our works of art.

By the first of September, I had already seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath the white trunks of three aspens branching out on a promontory next to the water. Ah, how many stories their colors told! Week by week, each tree’s character gradually emerged, admiring itself reflected in the lake’s smooth mirror. Each morning, the curator of this gallery replaced the previous display with something more vivid or harmonious upon the walls.

In October, thousands of wasps came to my cabin, seeking winter quarters, settling on my windows and overhead walls, sometimes discouraging visitors. Each morning, when the cold numbed them, I swept some out, but I was not overly concerned with getting rid of them; in fact, I felt honored that they chose my place as shelter. They never bothered me, even sleeping beside me, and eventually vanished into unknown crevices, avoiding winter and unbearable cold.

Like the wasps, before I finally settled into winter quarters in November, I used to go to the northeast side of Walden, where the sun reflected off pitch-pine woods and the rocky shore to make the pond’s “fire-side”; it’s much nicer and healthier to be warmed by the sun while you can, instead of an artificial fire. In this way, I warmed myself by the glowing embers summer had left, as if I were a departing hunter.

When building my chimney, I studied masonry. My bricks were second-hand and had to be cleaned with a trowel, so I learned more than usual about the qualities of bricks and trowels. The mortar on them was fifty years old and supposedly still hardening; but this is just one of those tales people like to repeat, whether true or not. Such sayings harden too and stick more tightly with age, and it would take much effort to clean off such old notions. Many Mesopotamian villages are built from second-hand bricks taken from Babylon’s ruins, and their cement is even older and likely harder still. Regardless, I was impressed by the toughness of the steel, which withstood so many blows without wearing out. Since my bricks had served in a chimney before, although I didn’t find Nebuchadnezzar’s name on them, I chose as many fireplace bricks as I could to save on labor and waste, filling spaces around the fireplace with stones from the pond shore, and making mortar with white sand from the same place. I lingered most around the fireplace—the heart of the house. I worked so deliberately that although I began in the morning at ground level, by night a row of bricks just inches above the floor served as my pillow; yet I don’t remember getting a stiff neck from it—my stiff neck is older than that. Around this time, I took in a poet for a fortnight, which made space tight. He had his own knife, though I had two, and we cleaned them by thrusting into the earth. He helped me cook as well. I liked watching my work rise, square and solid, and felt that its slow progress meant it would last long. The chimney is something of its own entity, rising from the ground through the house towards the sky; even after a house burns down, the chimney sometimes stands as a mark of its importance and independence. This was late summer. November had now arrived.

The north wind had already started to cool the pond, though weeks of steady blowing were needed because it is so deep. When I began having an evening fire, before my house was plastered, the chimney drew smoke well, thanks to the many gaps between the boards. Yet I spent happy evenings in that cool, airy space, surrounded by the rough brown boards marked with knots, and rafters overhead with their bark still on. After I plastered, my house never pleased my eye as much, although I had to admit it was more comfortable. Shouldn’t every room have a ceiling high enough to create some shadowy ambiguity above, where flickering shadows play at night among the rafters? These shapes are more pleasing to the imagination and fancy than even the most expensive furniture or fresco paintings. I began to truly live in my house when I used it not only for shelter, but for warmth. I had a couple of old andirons for the hearth, and it made me happy to see the soot form on the chimney I had built, and I poked the fire with more pride and satisfaction than ever. My home was small, barely able to house an echo; yet it seemed larger for being one room and isolated from neighbors. All the amenities of a house were gathered in a single area: kitchen, bedroom, parlor, and living room; whatever joys parents or children, masters or servants find in a house, I enjoyed them all. Cato says the head of a family (*patremfamilias*) ought to have in his rustic villa “cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriæ erit,” meaning, “an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, virtue, and glory.” I had in my cellar a small barrel of potatoes, about two quarts of weevil-eaten peas, and on my shelf a bit of rice, a jug of molasses, and a peck each of rye meal and Indian meal.

Sometimes I dream of a larger and busier house, built in a golden age of durable materials, plain and without extravagance, but still a single room—a vast, rough, primitive hall, without ceiling or plaster, with bare rafters and beams creating a kind of secondary sky overhead—to shed rain and snow; where the king and queen posts stand to greet your homage after you’ve done honor to the prostrate Saturn of some earlier age as you step inside; a cavernous house where you must reach up a torch to see the roof; where some live in the fireplace, some in a window’s alcove, some on benches, at one end of the hall or another, or even up in the rafters with the spiders; a place you have entered as soon as you open the outside door, and that’s the end of the ceremony; a shelter you’d be happy to reach on a stormy night, with all the essentials and nothing unnecessary; where you can see all the house’s treasures at a glance, and everything you need hangs on its peg; kitchen, pantry, parlor, bedroom, storeroom, attic all at once; where you can spot a barrel or a ladder, a cupboard, hear the pot’s boil, appreciate the fire that cooks your meal and the oven that bakes your bread, and the required utensils are the best decorations; where the laundry is done, the fire left burning, and the mistress remains present—and you may be asked to move off the trapdoor so the cook can go down to the cellar, thus learning if the ground beneath you is solid or hollow without stomping. A house as open as a bird’s nest inside, so that you cannot go in the front and out the back without meeting some of the inhabitants; where to be a guest means being given the run of the house, not locked out of most rooms and told to “make yourself at home” in just one cell—in solitary confinement. The modern host does not welcome you to *his* hearth, but hires a mason to build one for your use somewhere in an alley; hospitality has become the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy in the cooking as if he intends to poison you. I know I’ve visited many a man’s property, and could have been ordered away, but I haven’t been inside many men’s actual homes. I might visit a king and queen living simply in the kind of house I’ve described, if I were passing by; but if I’m ever caught in a modern palace, all I’ll want to know is how to back out of it.

It seems even the language we use in our parlors has lost its vigor and become all *palaver*, our lives being so distant from their symbols; our metaphors so far-fetched, as if conveyed by dumbwaiters and service corridors—the parlor so far from the kitchen and workshop. The dinner itself is only a metaphor of a dinner, typically. It’s as though only the “savage” lives close enough to Nature and Truth to borrow metaphors from them. How can a scholar living far away—say, in the Northwest Territory or the Isle of Man—know what is truly parliamentary in the kitchen?

Still, only one or two of my guests ever dared to remain and eat a hasty-pudding with me; but when that crisis neared, they beat a hasty retreat instead, as if it would bring the house down. Yet the house survived plenty of hasty-puddings.

I did not plaster the house until freezing weather. For this, I ferried cleaner, whiter sand from the far shore of the pond in a boat—a boat which could have tempted me to go much farther if need be. By then, my house had been shingled down to the ground on every side. While putting up the laths, I was glad that I could set each nail with one blow, and I prided myself on moving plaster from board to wall quickly and neatly. I was reminded of the cocky fellow who liked to give advice to workers and, one day, rolled up his sleeves to try plastering; after loading his trowel and aiming confidently at the laths, he watched as the entire load fell into his ruffled shirt. Again, I admired the economy and utility of plaster, which effectively blocks the cold and provides a fine finish—and I learned about the different mishaps a plasterer might face. I was surprised how thirsty the bricks were, absorbing all moisture from my plaster before I could smooth it, and how many pails it takes to christen a new hearth. The previous winter, as an experiment, I had burned shells of the *Unio fluviatilis* freshwater mussel from our river to make a small amount of lime, so I knew where some of my materials came from. I could have found good limestone within a mile or two and burned it myself if I’d wanted to.

Meanwhile, the pond was icing over in its shadiest, shallowest corners—sometimes days or weeks before the main freeze. The first ice is especially fascinating and flawless: hard, dark, transparent, offering the best chance to observe the shallow bottom. Lying down on ice barely an inch thick, like an insect skating across water, you can study the bottom just a few inches below, as if peering at a picture behind glass—the water always smooth at that stage. The sand is riddled with furrows where creatures have doubled back on their tracks, scattered with cadis-worm cases made of tiny grains of white quartz—perhaps these insects made the furrows, since their cases sometimes lie there, though the furrows seem too big. But the ice itself is most interesting, if you observe it right away. Examining it the morning after it freezes, you find that most of the bubbles you first thought were inside it are really against its underside, and more are continually rising from the bottom; as yet the ice itself is relatively solid and dark, so you can see through to the water. These bubbles are from one-eightieth to one-eighth of an inch across, very clear and beautiful, reflecting your face through the ice. There may be thirty or forty in a single square inch. Inside the ice are also narrow, upright oblong bubbles about half an inch long, sharp upward cones; or, if the ice is freshly frozen, tiny spherical bubbles stacked like a bead string. But those within the ice are fewer and less obvious than those below. Sometimes I’d toss stones onto the ice to test its strength. Stones that broke the surface would take air with them, creating large, clear bubbles beneath. On returning two days later, I found the large bubbles still intact, though about an inch more ice had formed, as seen by the seam at the cake's edge. But since the last two days had been like Indian summer, the ice was no longer clear and dark green, but opaque and whitish or gray, and, though twice as thick, not much stronger, for the bubbles had expanded in the warmth, merged, and lost their order: they’d shifted, often overlapping like coins from a bag or in thin flakes. The beauty of the ice was gone, and it was too late to study the lakebed. Curious where my big bubbles were in the new ice, I broke out a cake containing a medium-sized one and flipped it upside down—the new ice had formed around and beneath the bubble, so it was trapped between the two ices. The bubble lay wholly in the lower ice, just underneath the upper layer, flat and rounded, about a quarter-inch deep and four inches wide. I was surprised to find that immediately below the bubble, the ice had melted in a smooth, bowl-like shape to five-eighths of an inch at the center, leaving a thin partition—barely an eighth inch thick—between bubble and water; and in many places, small air bubbles in it had burst downward, so under the bigger bubbles—some a foot across—there may have been no ice at all. I deduced that the infinite tiny bubbles seen at first had also been frozen this way and each, in its way, had worked like a magnifying glass on the ice below to melt and weaken it. These are the little air-guns that help make the ice crack and boom.

Finally, winter arrived for real just as I finished plastering, and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had just gotten permission. Night after night, geese landed with a thunder of wings and noise even after snow covered the ground, some alighting in Walden, some flying low toward Fair Haven bound for Mexico. Several times, returning from the village at ten or eleven at night, I heard geese or ducks treading dry leaves behind my shed, coming up to feed, and the faint honk or quack of the leader as they hurried away. In 1845, Walden froze solid for the first time the night of December 22, earlier than Flint’s and other shallow ponds and the river, already frozen for over ten days; in ’46, December 16; in ’49, about December 31; in ’50, about December 27; in ’52, January 5; and in ’53, December 31. Snow had already covered the ground since November 25, suddenly surrounding me with winter’s scenery. I drew even further into my shell, trying to keep a good fire burning in the hearth—and in my own spirit. Outdoors, my work was to gather dead wood from the forest, carrying it by hand or across my shoulders, sometimes dragging a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. An old forest fence past its prime was a tremendous source of fuel. I gave it over to Vulcan, since it was done serving Terminus. How much more interesting is a meal cooked by wood the man has just gone out into the snow to seek—or steal!—for himself? Bread and meat taste sweeter that way. There’s enough brushwood and waste timber in our forests to support many fires, and some say it even hampers the growth of young woods. I also used the pond’s driftwood. During summer, I found a raft of pitch pine logs pinned together by Irish workers during the railroad’s construction. After soaking for two years and then drying six months on shore, they were still perfectly sound, though utterly waterlogged. One winter day, I had fun sliding this raft across the pond, nearly half a mile, skating behind with one end of a fifteen-foot log on my shoulder and the other on the ice; or else tied logs together with birch twigs, then dragged them with a longer birch or alder stick hooked at the end. Though waterlogged and nearly as heavy as lead, they burned hot and long—perhaps even better for the water, as if the pitch, confined by moisture, burned longer like an oil lamp.

Gilpin, in his description of England’s forest dwellers, notes that “the encroachments of trespassers, and the houses and fences thus raised on the forest borders,” were “considered as great nuisances by the old forest law, and were severely punished under the name of *purprestures*, as tending *ad terrorem ferarum—ad nocumentum forestæ*, &c.,”—to frighten the game and ruin the forest. But I cared about saving both deer and greenery more than hunters or woodchoppers—almost as much as if I were the Lord Warden. If any of it burned, even by my own accident, my grief was longer and harder to overcome than that of the landowners themselves. I even grieved when the landowners cut it down. I wish our farmers felt some of that reverence the Romans did when they thinned or lit up a sacred grove (*lucum conlucare*), believing it sacred. The Roman made an offering and prayed, “Whatever god or goddess you are to whom this grove is sacred, be merciful to me, my family, my children, etc.” It’s notable how valuable wood remains, even now and in this new country—a value more lasting and universal than gold. For all our progress, no one ignores a pile of wood—it’s as precious as for our Saxon or Norman ancestors. If they made bows from it, we make gunstocks. Michaux noted over thirty years ago that wood for fuel in New York and Philadelphia “nearly equals, and sometimes 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 hundred miles by cultivated plains.” Here, the cost of wood rises almost every year, and the only question is how much higher it will go. Mechanics and tradesmen, who come to the forest for no other reason, make sure to attend the wood auction, sometimes paying a high price just to glean after the cutters. For many years now, people from all classes and nations—the New Englander, the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, aristocrat and peasant, scholar and so-called savage—have needed the forest’s sticks for warmth and cooking. I could not do without them either.

Everyone looks at his woodpile with affection. I love to have mine by my window, with plenty of chips to remind me of good work. I had an old axe abandoned by someone, and on sunny winter days, I amused myself chopping at stumps I’d taken from my bean-field. As my ox-driver predicted when I plowed, they warmed me twice: once as I split them and again as I burned them—no fuel gives more heat. About the axe, I was told to get the blacksmith to “jump” it, but instead I skipped him, fitted it with a woods-grown hickory handle, and made do. Dull or not, it was at least well hung.

A few pieces of fat pine were a real treasure. It’s odd to remember how much of this fire food is still hidden underground. In past years, I often “prospected” some barren hillside where a pitch pine forest once grew, digging out the roots. They’re nearly indestructible—stumps thirty or forty years old will still have sound hearts, even as their sapwood has turned to mold and their bark forms a circular ridge a few inches out. With axe and shovel, you pursue these yellow gold veins deep into the ground. Still, I usually started my fire with dry forest leaves gathered in my shed before snow came. Green hickory, finely split, makes the best kindling for woodchoppers camped in the woods, and I sometimes obtained a little. When the townsfolk lit their fires beyond the horizon, I too signaled to Walden’s wild denizens with my own smoky streamer rising from the chimney that I was awake. —

Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,  
melting your wings as you rise,  
lark without song, dawn’s messenger,  
circling above the hamlets as your nest;  
or else, fleeting dream, and shadowy form

Of midnight vision, gathering up your skirts;  
By night veiling the stars, and by day  
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun;  
Take my incense upward from this hearth,  
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.

Fresh green wood, recently cut—though I used only a little—worked better for me than anything else. Sometimes I would leave a good fire burning when I went for a walk on a winter afternoon; and when I returned, three or four hours later, it would still be alive and glowing. My house was not empty when I was gone. It felt as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was Fire and I who lived there; and most of the time, my housekeeper was quite reliable. One day, however, as I was splitting wood, I thought I’d peek in the window to see if my house was on fire; it’s the only time I remember feeling especially worried about it. I looked and saw that a spark had caught on my bed, and I went in and put it out after it had burned a spot about the size of my hand. But my house stood in such a sunny and sheltered spot and the roof was so low that I could easily let the fire go out in the middle of almost any winter day.

The moles made their nests in my cellar, chewing on every third potato and making a cozy bed even there out of hair left after plastering and brown paper; for even the wildest animals crave comfort and warmth as much as people do, and they survive winter only by carefully securing them. Some of my friends talked as if I had come to the woods specifically to freeze to death. The animal simply makes a bed, which he heats with his body, in a sheltered spot; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious room, warms it, and instead of stealing warmth from himself, makes the room into his bed, where he can move about without so much bulky clothing, keep a kind of summer in the heart of winter, and with windows let in the light, and with a lamp extend the day. In this way, he rises a bit above instinct and saves some time for artistic pursuits. And yet, when I had been exposed to the harshest winds for a long time, my whole body started to feel numb, when I finally reached the warm air of my house, I soon recovered and extended my days. But even the most luxuriously sheltered person has little to boast about in this regard, nor do we need to trouble ourselves worrying about how the human race may eventually be wiped out. Their existence could end at any moment with a slightly harsher blast from the north. We mark time by Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a slightly colder Friday or greater snowfall could put an end to humanity altogether.

The next winter, I used a small cooking-stove for the sake of economy, since I did not own the forest; but it did not keep fire as well as the open fireplace. Cooking then became mostly a chemical process, losing its poetry. In these days of stoves, it will soon be forgotten that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, like the Indians did. The stove not only took up space and filled the house with odors, but it hid the fire, and I felt like I’d lost a companion. You can always see a face in the fire. The laborer, gazing into it at night, cleanses his thoughts of the dross and earthiness gathered through the day. But I could no longer sit and watch the fire, and a poet’s words came back to me with new meaning.—

“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.”

## Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors

I weathered some merry snowstorms, and spent some cheerful winter evenings by my fireside, while the snow whirled wildly outside, and even the hooting of the owl was silent. For many weeks, I saw no one on my walks except those who occasionally came to cut wood and haul it to the village. The elements, however, helped me make a path through the deepest snow in the woods; for when I’d been through once, the wind blew oak leaves into my tracks, where they settled, and by soaking up the sun’s rays, melted the snow, making a dry bed for my feet, and at night their dark line guided me.

For human company, I had to imagine the former occupants of these woods. Within living memory of many townsfolk, the road near my house echoed with laughter and gossip, and the bordering woods were dotted with their gardens and homes, though it was more forested then than now. In some places, even in my memory, pines used to scrape both sides of a carriage at once, and women and children, who had to go alone on foot to Lincoln, did so fearfully, often running part of the way. Though mainly a humble route to neighboring villages or for the woodman’s team, it once entertained travelers more than now by its variety and lingered in their memory. Where now there are broad open fields stretching from the village to the woods, the path then ran through a maple swamp on a base of logs, the remains of which, I’m sure, still lie under the present dusty road, from Stratton (now the Alms House) Farm to Brister’s Hill.

East of my bean-field, 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 Concordiensis. Some say he was a Guinea Negro. A few recall his patch of land among the walnuts, which he planned to let grow up until he was old and would need them; but in the end a younger and paler speculator got them. He too, however, now lies in as narrow a space as anyone. Cato’s half-buried cellar hole still remains, though few know of it, as it is hidden from travelers by a fringe of pines. Now it is filled with smooth sumac (*Rhus glabra*), and one of the earliest goldenrods (*Solidago stricta*) grows abundantly there.

Here, right next to the corner of my field, even closer to town, Zilpha, a Black woman, had her small house, where she spun linen for the townspeople, making Walden Woods ring with her loud singing, for she had a powerful and remarkable voice. In the War of 1812, however, her home was set on fire by English soldiers, prisoners on parole, while she was away, and her cat, dog, and chickens were all lost in the flames. She led a hard and somewhat harsh life. An old frequent visitor to these woods remembers passing by her house at noon and hearing her muttering over her bubbling pot, “Ye are all bones, bones!” I have seen bricks among the oak brush there.

Farther down the road, on the right, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” once a slave of Squire Cummings—there still grow the apple trees Brister planted and tended; large old trees now, though their fruit is still wild and sour for my taste. Not long ago I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burial ground, a little off to the side near the unmarked graves of British grenadiers who died retreating from Concord—where he is called “Sippio Brister,”—Scipio Africanus being a name he might well claim— “a man of color,” as if he were stained. The inscription also stated, quite bluntly, when he died; an indirect way of telling me he ever lived. With him was Fenda, his welcoming wife, a fortune teller, who was large, round, and dark—darker than any child of night—a dusky orb unlike anything else that had ever risen over Concord.

Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the woods, are the traces of a homestead of the Stratton family; once their orchard covered the whole slope of Brister’s Hill, but long ago the pitch pines killed it off, except for a few stumps, whose old roots still serve as wild rootstocks for many a healthy village tree.

Still closer to town, you come to Breed’s place, on the other side of the road, at the edge of the wood; ground famous for the tricks of a demon not clearly named in old mythology, who has played a major, shocking role in New England life, and deserves, as much as any mythic character, to someday have a biography written; he first appears as a friend or hired man, then robs and kills the whole family—New England Rum. But history shouldn’t tell the tragedies that happened here yet; let time pass and soften them. Here, vague and uncertain stories claim that a tavern once stood; the well—still there—cooled travelers’ drinks and watered their horses. Here men once greeted each other, shared news, and went on their way.

Breed’s hut stood only about twelve years ago, though it had long been empty. It was about the size of mine. Mischievous boys set it on fire one Election night, unless I am mistaken. I lived on the edge of the village then, and had just lost myself in Davenant’s *Gondibert*, during a winter when I seemed affected by lethargy—which, by the way, I never decided was a family trait (I had an uncle who would fall asleep shaving and had to sprout potatoes in the cellar on Sundays just to stay awake and keep the Sabbath) or from my attempt to read Chalmers’ collection of English poetry without skipping. It truly defeated my Nervii. I had just let my head drop onto the book when the bells rang for a fire, and in great haste the fire engines raced out, led by a scattered crowd of men and boys, myself at the front, having jumped the brook. We thought the fire was far south, beyond the woods—those of us who had run to fires before—barn, shop, or house, or all together. “It’s Baker’s barn,” someone yelled. “It’s the Codman place,” another insisted. Then more sparks flared above the woods, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted, “Concord to the rescue!” Wagons raced past with wild speed and heavy loads, carrying, perhaps, the insurance agent, determined to go however far; and now and then the engine bell sounded behind, slower but steady; and at the very end, as the rumors went later, were those who started the fire and gave the alarm. So we pressed on, like true idealists, ignoring our senses, until a turn in the road brought the crackling sound and the real heat from over the wall, and we realized—alas!—we were there. The closeness of the fire actually dampened our excitement. At first, we thought to throw a frog pond on it, but decided to let it burn; it was too far gone and worthless. So we gathered around our engine, jostled each other, shouted opinions through speaking-trumpets, or in quiet tones talked about the great fires the world has seen, including Bascom’s shop, and among ourselves, thought that if we were there in time with our engine and a full frog pond nearby, we could turn even the threatened last and universal fire into another flood. We finally left without causing any harm, and returned to sleep and *Gondibert*. But as for *Gondibert*, I’ll make an exception for that preface passage about wit being the soul’s powder—“but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder.”

It happened that I walked that way across the fields the next night, about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at that spot, I crept nearer in the dark and found the only survivor of the family I know of, the heir of both its virtues and vices, who alone cared about the burning, lying on his stomach looking over the cellar wall at the still smoking cinders below, muttering to himself as usual. He’d been working far off in the river meadows all day, and had used the first free moments to visit the home of his ancestors and his youth. He examined the cellar from all directions, always lying down to it, as if there was some treasure he remembered hidden between the stones, though there was only a pile of bricks and ashes. With the house gone, he looked at what remained. My silent presence comforted him, and he showed me, as best he could in the dark, where the well was covered up; a mercy that it could never be burned; and he searched the wall for the well-sweep his father had cut and installed, feeling for the iron hook or staple where a load had been fastened—the only thing left to cling to—to prove to me that it was no ordinary “rider.” I felt it, and still notice it almost every day in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family.

Once more, on the left, where you can see the well and lilac bushes by the wall in the now open field, lived Nutting and Le Grosse. But to return toward Lincoln.

Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road comes closest to the pond, Wyman the potter squatted, supplying his fellow townspeople with earthenware, and leaving descendants after him. They were never wealthy in worldly goods, holding the land by permission only while they lived; and often the sheriff came in vain to collect the taxes, and would “attach a chip” just for form, as I have read in his reports, there being nothing else he could take. One midsummer day, as I was hoeing, a man carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse by my field and asked about Wyman the younger. He had long before bought a potter’s wheel from him and wanted to know what had become of him. I had read of potter’s clay and wheels in Scripture, but it had never crossed my mind that the pots we use weren’t handed down unbroken from those times, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, and I was glad to hear that such a pottery craft had once been practiced in my neighborhood.

The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an Irishman, Hugh Quoil (if I have spelled his name with enough coils), who lived in Wyman’s house—Col. Quoil, he was called. Rumor said he had been a soldier at Waterloo. If he had lived, I would have had him tell his war stories again. Here his trade was ditch-digging. Napoleon went to St. Helena; Quoil came to Walden Woods. All I know of him is tragic. He was a well-mannered man, like someone who had seen the world, and could speak more civilly than you might expect. He wore a greatcoat in midsummer, plagued by trembling delirium, and his face was the color of carmine. He died in the road at the foot of Brister’s Hill soon after I arrived, so I don’t remember him as a neighbor. Before his house was torn down, when his friends avoided it as “an unlucky castle,” I visited. There lay his old clothes curled into shape from use, as if they were still him, upon his raised plank bed. His pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl broken at the fountain. That could never have symbolized his death, for he admitted to me that, though he had heard of Brister’s Spring, he had never seen it; and stained playing cards—kings of diamonds, spades, and hearts—were scattered over the floor. One black chicken that the administrator couldn’t catch, black as night and silent, not even croaking, waiting for Reynard, still went to roost in the next room. In the back was the faint outline of a garden, which had been planted but never received its first hoeing, owing to those terrible shaking fits, even though it was now harvest time. It was overrun with Roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, which clung to my clothes for all fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was freshly stretched on the back of the house, a trophy of his last Waterloo, but no warm cap or mittens would he need anymore.

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 grass there; some pitch pine or gnarled oak grows where the chimney nook once was, and a sweet-scented black birch, perhaps, waves where the door-stone once lay. Sometimes the well dent is still visible, where a spring once oozed; now dry and tearless grass; or it's covered deep, not to be found again until some late day, with a flat stone under the sod, from when the last of the family left. What a sorrowful act that must be—the covering up of wells! coinciding with the opening of wells of tears. These cellar dents, like abandoned fox burrows—old holes—are all that’s left of what was once the stir and business of human life, where “fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,” in some form or dialect, were debated. Yet all I can find of their conclusions amounts simply to “Cato and Brister pulled wool;” which is about as enlightening as the history of more renowned schools of philosophy.

Still the lively lilac grows, a generation after the door, lintel, and sill are long gone, unfolding its sweet-smelling flowers each spring to be picked by the thoughtful traveler; once planted and cared for by children, in front-yard plots—now standing by wall-sides in quiet pastures, yielding to new forests—last of its line, sole survivor of that family. Little did the dark-skinned children realize that the frail slip with just two shoots, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and watered daily, would root so well, outlive them, shelter in the rear that once shaded it, outlast the grown man’s garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a generation later—blossoming as beautifully and smelling as sweet as in that first spring. I note its still tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors.

But this small settlement, a seed of something more, why did it fail while Concord survives? Were there no natural advantages—no water privileges, as it were? Yes, the deep Walden Pond and cool Brister’s Spring—a chance to drink long, healthy draughts from these, yet all these men managed was to dilute their drink. They were generally a thirsty bunch. Couldn’t basket making, stable-broom crafting, mat-making, corn-parching, linen-spinning, and pottery have prospered here, turning the wilderness to bloom like the rose, and left a populous posterity to inherit the land of their fathers? The poor soil would at least have protected them from the degeneracy of lowlands. Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants add to the landscape’s beauty! Perhaps Nature will try again, with me as the first settler, and my house, raised just last spring, now the oldest in the hamlet.

I don’t know that anyone ever built on the exact site I occupy. Spare me a city built on the remains of an older city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens are cemeteries. The soil is blanched and cursed there, and before that becomes necessary, the earth itself will be destroyed. With such recollections, I repopulated the woods and lulled myself to sleep.

This time of year, I rarely had visitors. When the snow was deepest, no wanderer came near my house for a week or two at a time, but I lived as snug as a meadow mouse, or like cattle and poultry said to have survived buried in snowdrifts, even without food; or like that early settler’s family in the town of Sutton, in this state, whose cottage was completely buried in the great snow of 1717 while he was away, and an Indian located it only by the hole made by smoke from the chimney, rescuing the family. But no helpful Indian concerned himself about me; nor did he need to, for the master of the house was at home. The Great Snow! How cheerful it is to hear of! When farmers couldn’t take their teams to the woods or swamps, they had to cut down the shade trees by their houses, or, when the snow crust was harder, cut off trees in the swamps, ten feet above the ground, as appeared the next spring.

In the deepest snows, the path I used from the highway to my house, about half a mile long, could have been shown as a meandering dotted line, with big gaps between the dots. For a week of steady weather I took the same number of steps, each the same length, coming and going, walking carefully with the precision of dividers in my own deep tracks—to such routine winter reduces us—though often they were filled with sky-blue. But no weather ever fully stopped my walks, or rather my going out, for I often tramped eight or ten miles through deep snow to meet a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old friend among the pines; when the ice and snow weighed down their branches, sharpening their tops, the pines became almost firs; I waded up the highest hills when the snow was nearly two feet deep on level ground, shaking down new snow onto myself at each step; or sometimes crawling and struggling on hands and knees, when even hunters had retreated for winter. One afternoon, I amused myself watching a barred owl (*Strix nebulosa*) sitting on a dead lower limb of a white pine, close to the trunk, in broad daylight, myself only a rod away. He could hear when I moved and crunched the snow, but couldn’t clearly see me. When I made more noise, he would stretch out his neck, fluff his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but soon their lids would droop and he began to nod. I, too, felt sleepy after watching him half an hour, as he sat there with his eyes half open, like a winged brother of the cat. There was only a narrow slit remaining between his lids, through which he kept a small connection with me; thus, with half-shut eyes, looking from the land of dreams, and trying to see me, the faint object interrupting his vision. Eventually, at some louder sound or my getting closer, he would get uneasy and slowly turn about on his perch, as though annoyed at having his dreams disturbed; and when he launched himself off and flew silently through the pines, spreading his wings remarkably wide, I could not hear the least sound. Navigating among the pine boughs guided more by a delicate sense of their presence than by sight, feeling his twilight way with his sensitive wings, he found a new perch, where he could in peace await the dawning of his day.

As I walked the long causeway built for the railroad through the meadows, I met many a blustery, biting wind, for nowhere can the wind blow more freely; and when the frost struck one cheek, heathen that I was, I turned the other as well. It wasn’t much better by the carriage road from Brister’s Hill. For I still went to town, like a friendly Indian, when the open fields were all piled up between the Walden road’s walls, and half an hour would cover up the last traveler’s tracks. When I came back, new drifts had formed, through which I floundered, where the busy north-west wind had left powdery snow around a sharp corner, and not a rabbit’s track, nor even the tiny prints—the “small type”—of a meadow mouse could be seen. Yet I almost always managed to find, even in midwinter, some warm and springy swamp where grass and skunk-cabbage still grew green, and some hardy bird waited for spring’s return.

Sometimes, despite the snow, on returning at night from my walk I’d cross a woodchopper’s tracks leading from my door, and find his pile of wood shavings on the hearth, my house filled with the scent of his pipe. Or, on a Sunday afternoon, if I happened to be home, I’d hear the snow crunch under the step of a thoughtful farmer, who from far away in the woods came to have a social “crack”; one of the few in his line who are “men on their farms”; who wore a frock instead of a professor’s gown, and was as ready to draw a lesson from church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barnyard. We talked of rough, simple times, when men sat around large fires in bracing winter weather, thinking clearly; and when nothing else remained for dessert, we’d try our teeth on nuts that wise squirrels had long abandoned, for the thickest shelled are often empty.

The one who came from farthest to my hut, through deepest snow and most miserable weather, was a poet. A farmer, hunter, soldier, journalist, even a philosopher, might be discouraged; but nothing stops a poet, for he is driven by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business takes him out at any hour, even while doctors sleep. We made my little house ring with loud laughter and echo with deep, thoughtful talk, making up for Walden’s long silences. Broadway was still and deserted by comparison. At proper intervals, bursts of laughter rang out, which could as easily relate to the last joke as the next one. We crafted many “brand new” theories of life over a thin dish of gruel, which provided the joys of friendliness along with the clear mind needed for philosophy.

I should not forget that during my final winter at the pond, there was another welcome guest, who came through the village, in snow, rain, and darkness, until he saw my lamp shining through the trees, and spent several long winter evenings with me. One of the last philosophers—Connecticut gave him to the world—he first peddled her goods, then, as he says, his brains. He still peddles those, prompting God and shaming man, bearing only his own thoughts for fruit, like a nut its kernel. I believe he has more faith than anyone alive. His words and bearing always suggest a better world than most know, and he’ll be the last to be disappointed as time goes on. He has nothing invested in the present. But though largely ignored now, when his time comes, laws most are unaware of will take effect, and heads of families and rulers will come to him for advice.—

“How blind that cannot see serenity!”

A true friend of humanity; almost the only true friend of human progress. An Old Mortality—or better, an Immortality—patiently and faithfully clarifying the image engraved on men’s bodies, the God of whom they are but damaged and leaning monuments. With his hospitable mind he embraces children, beggars, the insane, and scholars alike, and welcomes everyone’s thoughts, adding to them his own breadth and elegance. I think he should run an inn on the world’s main road, where philosophers of all nations could stay, and on his sign should be written, “Entertainment for man, but not for his beast. Enter ye who have leisure and a quiet mind, and who truly seek the right path.” He may be the sanest person I know, with the fewest quirks; the same yesterday and tomorrow. We once wandered and talked, leaving the world behind, for he owed allegiance to no institution in it, freeborn, *ingenuus*. Whichever way we turned, it seemed as if heaven and earth had come together, since he made the landscape more beautiful. A blue-robed man, whose only fitting roof is the overarching sky reflecting his calmness. I don’t see how he ever could die; Nature cannot spare him.

With each of us bringing some well-seasoned “shingles” of thought, we sat and whittled them, testing our knives, admiring the clean, yellowish grain of pumpkin pine. We went so gently and carefully, or so smoothly together, that the fish of thought weren’t scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the shore, but came and went boldly, like the clouds drifting through the western sky, and the pearly flocks that sometimes form and dissolve there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding off a fable or two, and constructing castles in the air for which the earth provided no worthy foundation. Great Observer! Great Expecter! To talk with him was like a New England Night’s Entertainment. Ah! What conversations we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I mentioned—we three—it expanded and strained my little house; I wouldn’t dare estimate how many pounds above atmospheric pressure it supported on every circular inch; it spread its seams so much that afterward I had to pack them with much dullness to stop the leaks;—but I already had plenty of that sort of oakum prepared.

There was one more with whom I had “solid seasons,” long to remember, at his house in the village, who visited me from time to time; but I found no more community there.

There too, as everywhere, I sometimes awaited the Visitor who never arrives. The Vishnu Purana says, “The householder 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, waited long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see anyone coming from the town.

## Winter Animals

When the ponds were solidly frozen, they offered not only new and shorter routes to many places, but new views from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint’s Pond after it was covered with snow, even though I had often paddled and skated on it, it seemed so suddenly wide and foreign that I could think only of Baffin’s Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the edge of a snowy plain, where I didn’t recall ever standing before; and the fishermen, moving slowly over the ice at an uncertain distance with their wolfish dogs, looked like seal hunters or Eskimos, or in the mist seemed like fabulous creatures—I couldn’t tell if they were giants or dwarfs. I took this route when I went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, traveling off-road and passing no house between my own hut and the lecture hall. In Goose Pond, which lay on my way, a colony of muskrats lived, building their cabins high above the ice, although none could be seen outside as I crossed. Walden, usually as bare of snow as the others, or only with shallow, scattered drifts, became my yard, where I could walk freely when the snow was almost two feet deep elsewhere and the villagers were confined to their streets. There, far from the village and almost never hearing sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a huge moose yard, well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bent with snow or hedged with icicles.

For winter night sounds, and often by day, I heard the lonely but musical hoot of an owl far away—like the sound the frozen earth might make if struck with the right pick, the very native tongue of Walden Wood, soon quite familiar to me, though I never saw the bird making it. I rarely opened my door on a winter evening without hearing it; *Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo*, resounding, with the first three syllables accented like *how der do*; or sometimes just *hoo hoo*. One night early in winter, before the pond had frozen over, about nine o’clock, I was startled by the loud honking of a goose. Stepping to the door, I heard the beat of their wings like a storm in the woods as they flew low over my house. They crossed the pond toward Fair Haven, seemingly put off by my light, their leader honking steadily. Suddenly, a nearby cat-owl, with the harshest and loudest voice I ever heard in the woods, began to answer the goose at regular intervals, as if determined to shame this Hudson’s Bay intruder by showing a native’s greater vocal range—*boo-hooing* him out of Concord’s territory. "What are you doing alarming the fortress at this hour, which is sacred to me? Do you think I’m ever caught napping, and that I don’t have lungs and a voice like yours? *Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo!*" It was one of the most bracing discords I’ve ever heard. And yet, if you listened closely, it contained the elements of a harmony that these plains had never seen nor heard.

I also heard the whooping of the ice on the pond, my great bedfellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and wished to turn over, troubled by flatulence and dreams; or I was awakened by the cracking of the ground from the frost, as if someone had driven a team against my door, and in the morning I 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 ranging over the snow crust on moonlit nights, searching for a partridge or other prey, barking raggedly and wildly like forest dogs, as if struggling with some anxiety, seeking expression, striving for freedom, as if attempting to become true dogs and run freely in the streets. If we take the ages into account, might there not be a kind of civilization developing among animals as well as people? They seemed to me primitive, burrowing beings, still defending themselves, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one came close to my window, attracted by my light, barked a fox’s curse at me, then retreated.

Usually, the red squirrel (*Sciurus hudsonius*) woke me at dawn, darting across the roof and racing up and down the sides of the house, as if specifically sent from the woods for this task. During the winter, I threw out half a bushel of sweet-corn ears, which had not ripened, onto the snow crust by my door, and I was entertained watching the various animals drawn by the bait. In twilight and nighttime, rabbits came regularly for a hearty meal. All day, the red squirrels visited and entertained me with their antics. One would approach cautiously through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust in stops and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, a few quick paces one way, then another, with extreme speed and wasted energy, always acting as if in a hurry, but rarely covering more than half a rod at a time; and then, suddenly pausing with a comical expression and a random somersault, as if every eye in the universe were watching—because every squirrel’s movement, even deep in the forest, seems to require an audience, much like a dancer's—spending more time hesitating than it would take to walk the entire way. I never saw one actually walk. Then, before you could even say Jack Robinson, it would be at the top of a young pitch-pine, winding itself up and scolding imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and addressing the whole universe at once—for reasons I could never discern, nor do I think the squirrel knew itself. Eventually, it would reach the corn, pick a suitable ear, and dash the same unpredictable, geometric course to the wood-pile in front of my window, where it would look me in the face, then sit for hours, periodically retrieving new ears, greedily nibbling and tossing the half-stripped cobs aside. Soon, it would become more refined and almost play with its food, sampling only the insides of the kernels until the ear, balanced over the stick by one paw, fell from its careless hold to the ground. The squirrel would look down with a comical uncertainty, as if unsure whether the ear had life—unsure if it should retrieve it, find a new one, or just run; thinking of corn, then pausing to listen for what was in the wind. Thus, this little impish fellow would waste many ears in a morning. At last, seizing a particularly long, plump one, much bigger than itself, and expertly balancing it, the squirrel would set off to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, following the same zigzag course, stopping frequently, dragging the corn as if it were too heavy and causing it to scrape a path diagonal between vertical and horizontal—determined to get it home no matter what; a curiously frivolous and whimsical creature. Eventually, it would get the ear to its home, maybe carrying it into a pine tree forty or fifty rods away, and later I would find the cobs scattered throughout the woods.

Eventually the jays arrived, their harsh cries heard long before, as they approached stealthily from an eighth of a mile away, hopping from tree to tree, moving ever closer, then picking up kernels the squirrels had dropped. Sitting on a pitch-pine branch, they would sometimes try to swallow a kernel too big for their throats, nearly choking, then, after much effort, cough it back up and spend an hour trying to crack it open by pecking at it with their bills. They were plainly thieves, and I did not think highly of them; but the squirrels, though initially cautious, behaved as if they were simply taking what belonged to them.

The chickadees also arrived in flocks, picking up crumbs the squirrels had dropped, then flying to the nearest twig and, using their claws to hold the crumbs, hammered away with their little beaks as if they were insects in bark, until the crumbs were small enough to eat. Every day a small group of these titmice came to pull their dinner from my wood-pile or from crumbs at my door, making faint, flitting, lisping notes like icicles tinkling in the grass, or sometimes a lively *day day day*, or, on rare springlike days, a wiry, summery *phe-be* from the forest edge. They grew so used to me that, eventually, one landed on an armful of wood I was carrying and pecked at the sticks without fear. Once, while hoeing a village garden, a sparrow landed on my shoulder for a moment, and I felt more honored by that than I would have been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels, too, eventually became familiar enough to step onto my shoe when it was the nearest path.

When the ground was not yet fully covered, and again near winter’s end when snow melted from my south hillside and around my wood-pile, the partridges would emerge from the woods in the morning and evening to feed. No matter where you walk in the woods, the partridge bursts away on whirring wings, shaking snow down from leaves and twigs above, which then sifts through the sunbeams like golden dust; for this brave bird is not frightened by winter. It is often covered entirely by drifts and, as reported, “sometimes plunges from flight into the soft snow, where it stays hidden for a day or two.” I would sometimes startle them in open land as well, where they had come out from the woods at sunset to feed on wild apple-tree buds. They return to the same trees each evening, where clever hunters wait for them, and distant orchards near the woods often suffer. Still, I am glad the partridge is fed; it is Nature’s bird, thriving on buds and healthful fare.

On dark winter mornings, or short winter afternoons, I sometimes heard a pack of hounds coursing through the woods with their howling and yelping cries, unable to resist the instinct to chase, and the sound of the hunting horn in the distance confirming that man was following. The woods would echo, but no fox would emerge onto the open space of the pond, nor would I see the pack giving chase. Perhaps, at evening, I would see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing from their sleigh as a trophy, heading toward an inn. I am told that if the fox stayed hidden in the earth he would be safe, or if he ran straight away, no hound could catch him; but when he gets far ahead, he stops to rest and listen for the hounds, and when he runs, circles back toward his old territory, where the hunters await him. Sometimes, though, he will run along a wall for many rods, then leap far off to the side, and he seems to know that water won’t carry his scent. One hunter told me he once saw a fox, pursued by hounds, burst onto Walden when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run partway across, then return to the shore. Soon the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. On occasion a pack would hunt by themselves, passing by my door and circling my house, yelping and howling, seemingly possessed, so driven by longing that nothing could distract them. They circle until they find the fresh trail of a fox; a wise hound will abandon all else for it. Once, a man from Lexington came to my hut asking about his hound that made large tracks and had been hunting alone for a week. But I doubt he learned much, for every time I replied, he would interrupt with, “What do you do here?” He had lost his dog, but instead found a man.

There was an old hunter, dry-tongued, who used to bathe in Walden every summer when the water was warmest—and would sometimes visit me—who told me how, many years ago, he took his gun one afternoon for a walk through Walden Woods. As he walked along the Wayland road, he heard the cry of hounds, and soon a fox leaped over a wall into the road, then just as quickly out of it, with the man's shot missing him. Shortly after, an old hound and her three pups, hunting on their own, came in pursuit and disappeared into the woods. Later in the afternoon, while the hunter rested in dense woods south of Walden, he heard the hounds' voices farther off toward Fair Haven. On they came, their cry echoing from Well-Meadow and Baker Farm. He stood listening to their baying, sweet music to a hunter’s ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, gliding through the trees at an easy, steady pace, its steps masking sound with the leaf rustle, outdistancing the hounds. On a rock, the fox paused, listening, back to the hunter. For a moment, the hunter felt a pang of mercy; but it was fleeting, and before he knew it, he had fired—*whang!*—and the fox lay dead. Remaining in place, the hunter listened for the hounds as the woods echoed with their cries, until the old hound appeared, nose to ground, frenzied, charging directly to the rock; but upon seeing the dead fox, she stopped, silenced by amazement, circling it wordlessly. One by one, the pups arrived and, like her, fell silent, awed by the mystery. When the hunter revealed himself, their confusion ended. They waited quietly as he skinned the fox, and, after following for a while, returned to the woods. Later that evening, a Weston Squire came to the Concord hunter’s cottage to ask about his lost hounds, telling of their week-long hunt from Weston woods. The Concord hunter shared the tale and offered the fox skin, but the squire declined and left. He didn’t recover his hounds that night, but the next day learned they’d found shelter at a farm and departed early after being well fed.

That hunter could remember one Sam Nutting, who used to hunt bears on Fair Haven Ledges and trade their skins for rum in Concord village; he even claimed to have seen a moose there. Nutting had a well-known fox-hound named Burgoyne—he pronounced it "Bugine"—which my informant often borrowed. In the “Waste Book” of an old local trader—also a captain, town clerk, and representative—I found an entry dated Jan. 18th, 1742–3: “John Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0—2—3;” they’re no longer found here. In his ledger, Feb. 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton received credit “by ½ a Catt skin 0—1—4½;” surely a wildcat, since Stratton was a sergeant in the old French war and wouldn’t have earned credit for less noble prey. There is also credit for deer skins, which were sold daily. One man still keeps the antlers of the last deer killed in this area, and another shared details of the hunt his uncle participated in. In earlier days, the hunters here were a lively, numerous group. I recall one particularly lean Nimrod who would pick up a leaf by the roadside and play a tune on it, wilder and more melodious, as I remember, than any hunting horn.

At midnight, when the moon was out, I sometimes met hounds in my path, prowling the woods, slinking away as if afraid, standing watchfully in the bushes until I’d gone by.

Squirrels and wild mice competed for my nut supply. Around my house were many pitch-pines, between one and four inches thick, gnawed by mice the previous winter—which had been a Scandinavian winter for them, with snow lying deep and long, forcing them to eat a lot of pine bark along with their other food. These trees looked alive and vigorous by midsummer, some had grown a foot, though they were completely girdled; but after another winter, without exception, they died. It’s remarkable that a single mouse can have a whole pine tree for dinner, gnawing around it instead of lengthwise; perhaps it’s nature’s way to thin the crowded pines.

The hares (*Lepus americanus*) were very tame. One had her form under my house all winter, separated from me only by the floor, and startled me each morning with her dash away when I began to stir—thump, thump, thump, banging her head on the floor timbers in her haste. They would gather near my door at dusk to nibble potato peels I had thrown out, so well camouflaged with the earth that they were nearly invisible unless moving. Sometimes in the twilight I would lose sight of one lingering beneath my window, then catch sight again. If I opened the door at night, off they’d go with a squeak and a leap. Up close, they moved me to pity. One evening, one sat by my door, barely two paces away, trembling with fear yet reluctant to move; a tiny, thin creature, with ragged ears, sharp nose, thin tail and slender paws. It looked as if Nature no longer produced noble-statured animals but was down to her last reserves. Its large eyes looked young and sickly, almost swollen. I took a step, and off it darted, stretching out gracefully as it bounded across the snow crust, quickly putting the forest between itself and me—the wild, free venison asserting its vitality and the pride of Nature. Its thinness made sense; that was simply its nature. (*Lepus*, *levipes*, some think means light-foot.)

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the simplest and most native animal products; old, honored families, known since ancient times and still today; colored and shaped like Nature itself, closely related to leaves, the earth, and each other—one winged, one on foot. You don’t really see a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, but a natural one, as usual as rustling leaves. These creatures will always thrive, true natives, no matter what changes happen. If the forest is cleared, the sprouts and bushes that follow offer them more cover, making them even more abundant. It must be a poor country indeed that doesn’t support a hare. Our woods are full of both, and around every swamp, you can find partridge or rabbit tracks, bordered by twig fences and horsehair snares tended by some farm boy.

## The Pond in Winter

After a silent winter night, I awoke feeling as though some question had been asked of me, one I’d struggled to answer in my sleep—what, how, when, where? Yet there was dawn, with Nature herself, in whom all creatures live, gazing into my window, serene and satisfied, with no question on *her* lips. I awoke to an answered question: to Nature, to daylight. The snow lay deep on the land dotted with young pines, and the hill’s very slope beside my house seemed to say, Forward! Nature doesn’t ask or answer any mortal’s question; she resolved these long ago. “O Prince, our eyes admire and convey to the soul the marvelous and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils, no doubt, part of this glorious creation, but day comes to reveal to us this great work, stretching from earth even to the heavens.”

Then it was time for my morning duties. First, I take an axe and pail and go looking for water—if that isn’t just a dream. After a cold, snowy night it often took a divining rod to find it. Every winter, the liquid, trembling surface of the pond—so sensitive to each breath, reflecting every light and shadow—becomes solid a foot or foot and a half deep, strong enough to bear the heaviest teams, maybe covered with snow as deep as the ice itself, so the pond is indistinguishable from a flat field. Like marmots in the hills, the pond shuts its eyelids and dozes for three months or more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture among the hills, I cut first through a foot of snow, then through the same of ice, and open a window beneath my feet. Kneeling to drink, I look into the quiet room of the fishes, filled with a soft light like ground glass, its sandy floor just as it is in summer; a perennial, serene calm reigns there, matching the cool, even temperament of its inhabitants. Heaven is beneath our feet as much as above our heads.

Early in the morning, while everything is crisp with frost, men come with fishing reels and light lunches, letting down their lines through holes in the snow-covered field to catch pickerel and perch. These are wild men who follow different customs and trust different authorities than their townsfolk do, and by their comings and goings they connect towns in places where they would otherwise stay separate. They eat their lunch in thick coats on dry oak leaves by the shore, as wise in nature’s ways as the city man is in society. They have not consulted books and know and say much less than they do. The things they practice are said not yet to be known. Here is one using live perch to catch pickerel. You look in his pail with wonder, as if it contains summer itself, or as if he knows where summer hides. How did he get these fish in midwinter? He found worms in rotten logs since the ground froze, and thus caught perch. His very life runs deeper in Nature than even a naturalist’s studies; he himself is worthy of study. The naturalist gently lifts bark and moss with a knife; the fisherman splits logs open with his axe, bark and moss flying. He earns his living by stripping trees. Such a man is entitled to fish, and I like seeing Nature fully realized in him. The perch eats the grub, the pickerel eats the perch, and the man eats the pickerel. Thus, every link in the chain of being has its place.

As I walked around the pond in the mist, I sometimes enjoyed watching the old-fashioned ways some rougher fishermen used. Perhaps he had laid alder twigs over the small holes in the ice, spaced four or five rods apart and equally distant from shore, tied his line to a stick so it wouldn’t be pulled through, then passed the slack over a branch a foot above the ice, tying a dry oak leaf to the line to act as a signal: if pulled down, it meant a bite. These alder signs loomed at regular intervals along the misty pond’s edge as you circled halfway around.

Ah, the pickerel of Walden! Whenever I see them on the ice or in the well the fisherman carves, making a small hole to let water in, I’m always drawn to their beauty—they seem almost mythical, so foreign to the streets, and even to the forest; as exotic as Arabia to our Concord life. They have a dazzling, brilliant beauty, setting them well apart from the pale cod and haddock celebrated in town. They’re not green like pines, gray like stones, or blue like the sky; to me, they radiate colors even rarer—like gems or flowers—as if they are pearls, living crystals of Walden water. They are, of course, Walden through and through—the animal version of the pond, small Waldenses. It surprises me that they live here—that, in this deep, vast spring, far below the passing sleighs and carriages rattling above, this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never saw a pickerel in any marketplace; it would draw every eye. With a few convulsive struggles, these fish surrender their watery lives, like someone taken before his time to the airy skies above.

![walden_pond_map](assets/images/images/walden_pond_map.jpg)

walden_pond_map

Wishing to reclaim the long-lost bottom of Walden Pond, I carefully surveyed it, before the ice broke up, early in ’46, using a compass, chain, and sounding line. Many tales have been told about the bottom—or supposed bottomlessness—of this pond, with absolutely no basis in fact. It’s remarkable how long people will believe a pond has no bottom without ever taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited two such “Bottomless Ponds” in one walk around here. Many believed Walden reached straight through to the other side of the globe. Some, after lying flat on the ice for a while, peering down through the deceptive surface—perhaps with watery eyes fearing to catch a cold—imagined they saw vast holes “into which a load of hay might be driven,” if anyone could drive it there, the supposed source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions hereabouts. Others came from the village with a “fifty-six” and a wagon load of inch-thick rope, yet still failed to find a bottom; for while the “fifty-six” rested midway, they kept paying out rope in a vain attempt to fathom their own truly limitless capacity for marveling. But I can assure readers that Walden has a reasonably solid bottom at a not unreasonable, though somewhat unusual, depth. I easily sounded it with a cod-line and a stone weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the stone left the bottom, since I had to pull much harder once the water got beneath to help me. The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet; to which add the five feet it has since risen—making it one hundred and seven. This is an impressive depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be spared by the imagination. Suppose all ponds were shallow—would that not affect the minds of men? I am thankful this pond was made deep and pure as a symbol. As long as men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be considered bottomless.

A factory owner, hearing how deep I found it, doubted the truth, thinking that from his knowledge of dams, sand could not hold at such a steep angle. But the deepest ponds are not as deep in proportion to their surface as most believe, and, if drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys. They are not cups between hills; this one, unusually deep for its area, appears in a vertical cross-section not deeper than a shallow plate. Most ponds, when emptied, would leave behind a meadow just as shallow as those we often see. William Gilpin, so admirable on landscapes and mostly accurate, stood at the head of Loch Fyne in Scotland—a “bay of salt water sixty or seventy fathoms deep, four miles wide, and about fifty miles long, surrounded by mountains”—and commented, “If we could have seen it immediately after the diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of Nature made it, before the waters rushed in, what a horrid chasm it must have been!”

So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low  
Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,  
Capacious bed of waters—.

But if, using Loch Fyne’s shortest diameter, we apply these proportions to Walden—which, as we’ve seen, already looks like a shallow plate in cross-section—it would seem four times as shallow. So much for the *increased* horrors of Loch Fyne’s chasm when emptied. No doubt, many smiling valleys with their broad fields stretch across just such “horrid chasms” from which the waters have retreated, though only the geologist’s insight and vision can convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this. Often, a sharp eye can trace the shorelines of ancient lakes in the low hills on the horizon; and no later rising of the plain has been needed to conceal their story. But it’s easiest—as those who work on roads know—to find the hollows by the puddles after a rain. The truth is, imagination, given the slightest freedom, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature herself. Even the ocean’s depth will likely be found quite modest compared with its vast width.

Sounding through the ice allowed me to determine the bottom's shape more accurately than is possible in harbors that don’t freeze over, and I was surprised by its overall regularity. In the deepest part, several acres are more level than any field exposed to sun, wind, and plow. Along one randomly chosen line, the depth varied by only one foot in thirty rods; generally, near the middle, I could predict the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction within three or four inches. Some people speak of deep and dangerous holes even in placid, sandy ponds like this, but under such conditions, water smooths out all irregularities. The evenness of the bottom and its alignment with the shores and neighboring hills was so perfect that a distant promontory showed itself in the soundings across the pond, and its position could be traced by looking at the opposite shore. Cape becomes bar, plain becomes shoal, and valley and gorge become deep water and channel.

When I mapped the pond to a scale of ten rods to an inch, placing over a hundred soundings, I noticed an interesting fact. Seeing that the greatest depth was apparently at the map’s center, I laid a ruler across the map lengthwise, and then widthwise, and discovered, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length crossed the line of greatest breadth *exactly* where the depth was greatest. This, despite the nearly flat middle, the pond's irregular outline, and the lengths and widths that reach into the coves. And I thought: who knows if this hint could lead us to the ocean’s deepest spot, just as with a pond or puddle? Isn’t this also the rule for a mountain’s height, being the opposite of a valley? A hill’s peak is not where it’s narrowest.

Of five coves, three—or all those I’d sounded—had a bar across their entrances, with deeper water inside, so that the bay was not only a horizontal but also a vertical expansion of water, forming a basin or separate pond—the capes marking the course of the bar. Every harbor on the coast also has a bar at its mouth. The wider the cove’s mouth compared to its length, the deeper the water over the bar compared to the basin. Given the cove's length, width, and surrounding shore character, you have nearly all you need for a formula.

Wanting to test how close I could guess the deepest spot in a pond just by the shoreline outlines and shore character, I mapped White Pond—about forty-one acres, no islands, no visible inlet or outlet. The lines of greatest and least breadth met very close where two capes nearly touched and two bays receded. I ventured to mark a spot, just off that line but on the greatest length, as the deepest. Sure enough, the deepest part was within a hundred feet of that, even further in the direction I'd suspected, and was only a foot deeper—sixty feet. Of course, a stream passing through or an island would complicate the problem much more.

If we knew all Nature’s laws, knowing just one fact, or one actual phenomenon at that point, would let us infer all further results. Now, knowing only a few laws, our conclusions are thrown off—not because of Nature’s confusion or irregularity, but because we are ignorant of crucial factors. Our ideas of law and harmony are usually limited to cases that we detect; but the harmony from far more numerous, seemingly conflicting (yet truly cooperating) laws that we don’t detect is even more marvelous. The particular laws are like our perspectives; as, for the traveler, a mountain’s outline changes with every step and has endless profiles, though it has only a single true form. Even when split or tunneled through, it remains not fully understood.

What I’ve seen about the pond is equally true in ethics. It’s the law of averages. This rule of two diameters not only guides us to the sun in the solar system or the heart in man, but just as drawing lines through the length and breadth of a man’s behaviors and paths in life—into his coves and inlets—their intersection will be the height or depth of his character. Maybe we only need to know how his shores trend, his surrounding circumstances, to infer his depth and hidden bottom. If he’s surrounded by mountainous circumstances, a prominent shore overshadowing and reflected within him, it suggests a matching depth. But a flat, unbroken shore proves he is shallow on that side. In our bodies, a bold projecting brow slopes away and indicates a similar depth of thought. Likewise, every cove or inclination has a bar across its mouth: each is our harbor for a time, holding us partly landlocked. These inclinations are not usually whimsical, but their shape and size are set by the promontories of the shore—the ancient axes of elevation. If this bar grows large enough from storms, tides, or settling waters, reaching the surface, then what started as just an inclination in the shoreline—harboring a thought—becomes an independent lake, cut off from the ocean, where that thought develops its own conditions, changes from salty to fresh, becomes a sweet or dead sea, or marsh. When each individual enters this life, perhaps such a bar rises for them somewhere. The truth is, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts mostly wander an unharbored coast, frequent only the bays of poetry, or steer for popular ports, and visit the dry docks of science, just to refit for the world, with no natural currents to individualize them.

As for Walden’s inlet or outlet, I have found none but rain, snow, and evaporation, though perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such sites could be found—because where water enters it will probably be coldest in summer and warmest in winter. When the ice-cutters worked here in ’46–7, some cakes were rejected for stacking because they weren’t thick enough. The cutters discovered a small area where the ice was two or three inches thinner than elsewhere, which made them think there was an inlet there. They also pointed out what they thought was a “leach hole,” where the pond supposedly leaked out under a hill to a nearby meadow, actually pushing me on a cake of ice to examine it. It was a small cavity under ten feet of water; but I believe I can guarantee the pond won’t need patching until they find a worse leak than that. Someone suggested that, if such a “leach hole” existed, its link to the meadow might be proved by dropping colored powder or sawdust at its mouth, and placing a strainer over the meadow spring to catch anything coming through.

While I was surveying, the ice—sixteen inches thick—moved up and down under a light breeze like water. It’s well known that a level can’t be used on ice. Just one rod from shore, the greatest up-and-down movement, measured with a level from land aimed at a staff on the ice, was three quarters of an inch, though the ice seemed firmly attached. It was probably greater in the center. Who knows but that if our instruments were sensitive enough, we might detect undulation in the earth’s crust? With two legs of my level on shore and the third on the ice, and sights set over the latter, the tiniest rise or fall of the ice meant several feet of difference on a tree across the pond. When I started cutting holes for sounding, there were three or four inches of water atop the ice, under deep snow that had sunk it; but water immediately began pouring into these holes, running for two days in deep streams that eroded the ice on all sides and helped, if not mainly caused, to dry the pond’s surface—as water flowed in, it lifted and floated the ice. It was a bit like cutting a hole in a ship’s hull to let the water out. When holes like this freeze, then rain comes, and a new freeze lays a smooth fresh ice on top, underneath it becomes beautifully patterned with dark, web-like shapes you might call ice rosettes—marks made by the currents from all sides converging. Also, when the ice was covered by shallow puddles, I’d sometimes see a double shadow of myself—one on the ice, one on the trees or hills.

While January is still cold, and the snow and ice thick and strong, the thoughtful landlord arrives from the village to gather ice for cooling his summer drinks. There's something impressive and even touching about such wisdom—to foresee July’s heat and thirst in the midst of January, bundled in heavy coat and mittens!—while so many other things remain unprepared for. Perhaps he stores up no treasures in this world that can cool his next life’s summer drink. He cuts and saws the solid pond, opens the fishes’ home, and carts away their very element and air, chained and staked like corded wood, through the useful winter air, to cold winter cellars, where it will be used to cool the coming summer. It looks like solid blue as it’s carried far off through the streets. These ice-cutters are a merry bunch, full of jokes and fun, and when I walked among them, they’d often invite me to saw with them, pit-fashion—with me standing beneath.

In winter ’46–7, a hundred men of northern stock descended on our pond one morning, with loads of eccentric farming gear—sleds, ploughs, drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, each man carrying a double-pointed pike-staff not found in the New-England Farmer or the Cultivator. At first I wasn’t sure if they’d come to sow winter rye or a new Icelandic grain. Not seeing any manure, I guessed they meant to skim the land, as I had, thinking the soil deep and unused for long. They said a gentleman farmer behind the operation wanted to double his money—already half a million—by putting a second dollar atop each one, stripping off Walden Pond’s only coat, even its skin, in the hardest winter. They immediately began ploughing, harrowing, rolling, and furrowing, as if to make this a model farm; but while I watched to see what seed they’d drop in, a group next to me suddenly began hauling up the virgin “mould” itself, with a quick jerk—right to the sand or, rather, the water (for the “soil” was springy)—and sledding it off, and then I guessed they must really be cutting peat in a bog. They came and went daily, the locomotive letting out its peculiar shriek to and from somewhere in the polar regions, like a flock of arctic snow-birds. Sometimes Squaw Walden took revenge, as a hired man, walking behind his team, slipped through a ground crack toward Tartarus, and that once-brave man was cut down to a mere ninth of himself, nearly lost his animal warmth, sought shelter in my house, and admitted there is merit in a stove; or sometimes a frozen patch broke steel from a ploughshare, or a plough got stuck and needed to be cut free.

Literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee overseers, came from Cambridge every day to cut ice. They divided it into cakes by methods well known, which were then sledded to shore, quickly hauled onto an ice platform, and stacked—row upon row, as neatly as flour barrels—with hay stuffed between the outside blocks to keep out the air, since cold winds create big cavities inside by finding tiny passages, leaving only a few supports and eventually toppling down the stack. It first looked like a great blue fortress or Valhalla, but once the rough meadow hay filled the cracks, rime and icicles formed, making it look like a venerable, moss-cloaked ruin made of blue-tinted marble—a home for Winter, the old man in the almanac—his own shanty, perhaps planning to spend his summer with us. They figured not even 25 percent of this would reach its destination, and two or three percent would be lost in transit, but an even greater amount didn’t go as intended; either because the ice kept worse than expected, being full of air, or for some other reason, most never reached market. This pile—estimated at ten thousand tons from the winter of ’46–7—was eventually covered with hay and boards; even though it was uncovered the following July and some hauled off, the rest sat all summer and the next winter exposed to the sun, not fully melting until September 1848. So the pond reclaimed most of its ice.

Like the water, Walden ice, seen close up, has a greenish tint, but at a distance is a beautiful blue, and it’s easily distinguished from the white ice of the river or the greenish ice of some other ponds, even a quarter-mile away. Sometimes a massive cake drops from the ice-man’s sled onto the village street, lying there for a week like a big emerald, drawing the eyes of all who pass. I’ve noticed that a part of Walden which, as water, looks green, will, when frozen, appear blue from the same spot. Likewise, the hollows around the pond sometimes, in winter, are filled with greenish water like its own, which freeze blue the next day. Perhaps the blue of water and ice comes from the light and air inside, and the most transparent is the bluest. Ice is a fascinating topic. They told me that some ice kept in Fresh Pond ice-houses for five years was still good as ever. Why does a bucket of water putrefy quickly, but frozen water stays fresh indefinitely? People sometimes say that this is the difference between the emotions and the intellect.

For sixteen days I watched from my window as a hundred men worked like busy farmers, with teams and horses and seemingly every tool of agriculture—a scene like those on the first page of the almanac; and every time I looked out I thought of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable of the sower, and such stories. Now, they are all gone, and in thirty days or so, I’ll look from that same window at the pure sea-green water of Walden reflecting the clouds and trees, sending up its evaporations in solitude, with no trace that any man stood there. Perhaps I’ll hear a lone loon laugh as he dives and grooms himself, or see a solitary fisherman in his boat, like a leaf floating, watching his reflection ripple in the water where a hundred men lately labored.

So it happens that the sweating residents of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, drink from my well. In the mornings I bathe my mind in the profound and cosmic philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, composed in ages past, compared to which our modern world and its books seem tiny and insignificant; and I sometimes wonder if that wisdom belongs to an earlier state of being, so far does its grandeur surpass our imaginings. I put down the book and go to draw water from my well, and behold!—I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma, Vishnu, and Indra, who still sits by the Ganges reading the Vedas, or lives at the root of a tree with his bread and water jug. I meet his servant at my well, and our buckets all but touch on the same chain. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred waters of the Ganges. With favorable winds, it passes the sites of legendary Atlantis and the Hesperides, circles the voyage of Hanno, floats past Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropical gales of the Indian seas, and lands in ports Alexander only dreamed of.

## Spring

When the ice-cutters open up large areas, it often causes a pond to thaw sooner, since the wind-agitated water, even in cold conditions, erodes the remaining ice. However, that wasn't the case with Walden that year; she soon put on a fresh, thick coat of ice. This pond never breaks up as early as the others in the neighborhood, both because of its greater depth and because no stream runs through it to help melt or erode the ice. I have never known it to open during the course of a winter, not even in '52–3, which really tested the ponds. Walden generally opens around the first of April, a week to ten days later than Flint’s Pond and Fair-Haven, starting to melt on the north side and in the shallow spots where it first froze. It reveals the absolute progress of the season better than any nearby water, being least affected by brief temperature changes. A sharp cold spell in March might seriously delay the opening of the other ponds, but the temperature of Walden steadily rises. On March 6, 1847, a thermometer stuck into the middle of Walden read 32°, or freezing point; near the shore, 33°; in the middle of Flint’s Pond that day, 32½°; a dozen rods from the shore in shallow water, beneath ice a foot thick, it was 36°. This three-and-a-half degree difference between the deep and shallow water of the latter pond, and the fact that much of it is relatively shallow, explains why it breaks up much sooner than Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was several inches thinner than in the middle at this time. In mid-winter, the middle had actually been warmer, with thinner ice there. Likewise, anyone who has waded along the shores of the pond in summer notices how much warmer the water is right next to the shore, where it’s just three or four inches deep, compared to farther out or especially near the bottom where it’s deep. In spring, the sun not only warms through the higher air and ground temperature, but its rays pass through ice a foot or more thick, reflecting from the bottom in shallow water. This warms the water and melts the underside of the ice while also melting the top, causing unevenness and air bubbles to stretch upward and downward until the ice is thoroughly honeycombed, and suddenly vanishes in a single spring rain. Ice has its grain like wood, and when a cake begins to rot or “comb,” taking on a honeycomb look, the air cells stand at right angles to the old water surface. Where a rock or log rises near the surface, the ice above is often much thinner—or even completely dissolved—by this reflected heat. I’ve heard that in an experiment at Cambridge, to freeze water in a shallow wooden pond, even though cold air moved underneath and had access to both sides, the sun’s reflection from the bottom still overpowered this, keeping the water from freezing well. If a warm rain in midwinter melts off the snow-ice from Walden and leaves a hard, dark, or glassy ice over the middle, there will be a strip of rotten, thicker white ice—a rod or more wide—around the shores, formed by this reflected heat. Also, as I’ve said, the bubbles within the ice act like little lenses, focusing sunlight to melt the ice beneath.

The year’s cycles play out every day in a pond on a miniature scale. Each morning, in general, the shallow water warms faster than the deep, even if it never gets quite as warm, and every evening it cools faster until dawn. The day is a microcosm of the year: night is winter, morning and evening are spring and fall, and noon is summer. The ice’s cracking and booming announce temperature shifts. One bright morning after a frigid night—February 24, 1850—when I went to Flint’s Pond for the day, I was amazed that striking the ice with my axe head made it ring like a gong for many rods around, or like a tight drum. The pond began to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it first felt the sun’s slanted rays over the hills. It stretched and yawned like a waking man, with growing commotion that went on for three or four hours. It napped briefly at noon, then boomed again in the evening as the sun faded. In the right weather, a pond fires its evening “gun” regularly. But in the middle of the day, filled with cracks and with less elastic air, it lost all resonance—fishes and muskrats probably could not be stunned then by a blow. Fishermen claim the “thundering of the pond” frightens the fish and makes them stop biting. The pond doesn't boom every evening, and I can never predict exactly when, but it surely follows a law as strict as the way buds open in spring. The earth is alive, covered with papillæ; even the largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the drop of mercury in its tube.

One reason I came to live in the woods was to be able to watch spring arrive. The ice at last becomes honeycombed, and walking on it, my heel can set right into it. Fogs, rains, and warmer suns gradually melt away the snow; the days are noticeably longer; and I can see I’ll make it through winter without having to add to my woodpile—large fires are no longer needed. I watch closely for spring’s first signs—a stray note from a returning bird, the striped squirrel’s chirp (his stores must be running low now), or a woodchuck emerging from hibernation. On March 13, after hearing the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather warmed, it didn’t wear away or break up like river ice, but, entirely melted for half a rod from the shore, the middle was only honeycombed and saturated—you could put your foot through when it was six inches thick. By the next evening, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would be completely gone—vanished with the fog as if spirited away. Once I crossed the middle only five days before it disappeared. In 1845, Walden first opened on April 1; in ’46, March 25; in ’47, April 8; in ’51, March 28; in ’52, April 18; in ’53, March 23; in ’54, about April 7.

Every detail of the rivers and ponds breaking up, and the weather settling, is especially engaging to us living in such an extreme climate. When the warm days arrive, people near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling, cannon-like noise, as if its icy chains were breaking apart from end to end—and then, they see it disappear within days. It’s like the alligator emerging from the mud, shaking the earth. One old man, a devoted student of Nature, almost as wise about her secrets as if he’d helped build her, told me—and I was amazed to hear him wonder at any of Nature’s ways, since I thought she had no secrets from him—that one spring day, he took his gun and boat, expecting to hunt some ducks. There was still ice on the meadows, but none in the river, and he went smoothly from Sudbury down to Fair-Haven Pond, only to find, unexpectedly, that most of the pond was still covered by a thick sheet of ice. It was a warm day, and he was surprised to see so much ice left. Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the far side of an island, then concealed himself in the bushes on the southern side, hoping to catch them as they landed. The ice was melted for three or four rods along the shore, with warm, muddy-bottomed, duck-friendly water inside, so he expected some ducks soon. After about an hour, he heard a low, strangely grand and distant sound like nothing before—gradually swelling until it was like a mighty flock swooping in. He jumped up, gun in hand, only to find the whole sheet of ice had started to move while he watched, drifting in to shore—the sound was its edge grinding along the bank, at first nibbling, then breaking up and piling its fragments along the island before stopping.

Finally, the sun’s rays find the right angle, warm winds stir up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and as the sun disperses the mist, it lights a patchwork landscape of russet and white smoking with incense—across which the traveler picks his way like stepping from islet to islet—cheered by the music of hundreds of tinkling streams and rivulets, carrying away winter’s legacy.

Few things delighted me more than watching how thawing sand and clay flow down the sides of a deep railroad cut on my way to the village—a sight rare on such a large scale, though there must be many more exposed banks since railroads were built. The material was sand of all grades and rich colors, mixed with some clay. When the frost comes out in spring, or even during a mild winter day, the sand flows down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out right through the snow and covering it where no sand had been seen before. Countless little streams overlap and cross, forming a strange hybrid—part obeying the laws of currents, part resembling vegetation. As it runs, it looks like sappy leaves, vines, or heaps of pulpy sprays a foot deep, reminiscent of the fringed, lobed, and tiled fronds of lichens. Or, you might think of coral, leopard's paws, bird feet, brains, lungs, entrails—excrements of all kinds. It’s truly *grotesque* vegetation, whose forms and colors are mimicked in bronze; a kind of ancient architectural foliage, more primal than acanthus, chicory, ivy, vine, or any plant leaf—maybe one day puzzling to geologists. The whole cut feels like an opened cave, its stalactites exposed to daylight. The sand’s colors are especially rich—browns, grays, yellowish, reddish—iron hues. When the flowing mass reaches the drainage at the foot of the bank it flattens into *strands*—the streams lose their semi-cylindrical shapes, spread, and mix as they become wetter—until they're nearly flat *sand*, still beautifully veined, with plant-like forms visible, and finally, in water, they become *banks* like those at river mouths, their forms lost in the ripple marks.

The bank, twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes covered with this kind of sandy “foliage” for a quarter mile—the result of just one spring day. What’s remarkable is how suddenly this sand “vegetation” appears. Seeing the inert bank (the sun hits one side first), and the other, bursting with fresh creation in an hour, I feel as if on the very ground where the Artist who made the earth and me was still at work—scattering new designs with boundless energy. I am nearer to the globe’s inner workings, since this sandy overflow is a leafy mass like the organs of an animal body. Even in the sands you find the prototype of the leaf. No wonder the earth displays itself in leaves; it teems with that same idea internally. The atoms already follow this law, taking seed from it. The overhanging leaf sees its likeness here. *Internally*, in the globe or animal, it is a moist thick *lobe*, a term that fits the liver, lungs, and *leaves* of fat (λείβω, *labor*, *lapsus*, to slip or flow; λοβος, *globus*, lobe, globe; lap, flap, and others). *Externally*, it becomes a dry, thin *leaf*, as *f* and *v* are pressed, dried *b*. The roots of *lobe* are *lb*—the soft mass of *b* (single-lobed or B, double-lobed), with the liquid *l* pressing it forward. In globe, *glb*, the guttural *g* adds a throat-like sense. Feathers and wings are drier, thinner leaves. So, you also go from the earthbound grub to the fluttering butterfly. The globe itself continually “translates” upward, becoming winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with tiny crystal leaves, as if it flowed into molds pressed by the fronds of water plants. The tree is nothing but a single leaf, and rivers are broader leaves whose pulp is the intervening soil, with towns and cities as insect eggs in their axils.

When the sun sets, the sand’s flow stops, but in the morning the streams start again, branching endlessly. Here, perhaps, you see the birth of blood vessels. If you look closely, you’ll see a softened stream of sand, round at the tip like a finger, pressing slowly and blindly down; eventually, with more sun and moisture, the most fluid part separates and makes a meandering channel—an artery—inside the larger mass, where you see a sparkling stream dart from one leafy stage to another, occasionally swallowed back into the sand. It’s remarkable how fast and perfectly sand organizes itself as it moves, using the best material for the razor edges of its path. These are the sources of rivers. In the silicious material the water leaves may lie the bony system; in the finest soil and organic matter, the flesh or cellular tissue. What is man but a lump of thawing clay? Even a human fingertip is just a frozen drop. Fingers and toes extend from the body’s thawing mass. Who knows how much the human form would spread and flow under a more generous sky? Isn’t the hand a spreading *palm* leaf with its veins and lobes? The ear could be compared, fancifully, to a lichen (*umbilicaria*) on the side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip—*labium*, maybe from *labor*—laps or flows from the edges of the wide mouth. The nose is a congealed drop, a stalactite. The chin is a larger drop—face’s liquid running together. The cheeks flow down the brows into the valleys of the face, deflected by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of a plant leaf is a large, slow-moving drop; the lobes are fingers of the leaf—as many as it has, in that many directions it could have flowed if more energy had been present.

So, it seemed, this one hillside was a perfect illustration of all Nature’s workings. The Creator patented only the leaf. What Champollion will decode this hieroglyph for us, so we may turn over a new leaf at last? This is more exciting to me than the productivity of vineyards. True, it’s somewhat excrement-like, with heaps of liver and bowels—almost as if the world were turned inside-out—but this at least suggests that Nature has bowels too, and is the mother of humanity after all. This is the frost leaving the earth; this is Spring. It comes before flowering spring, just as mythology precedes organized poetry. I know of nothing better to purge winter’s gloom. It convinces me that Earth still wears her swaddling clothes, stretching out infant fingers everywhere. Even the baldest brow sprouts fresh curls. Nothing is inorganic. These leafy heaps on the bank are like slag from a furnace—Nature “in full blast” within. The earth isn’t just dead history—strata piled like book pages, for geologists and antiquaries—but is living poetry, like the tree’s leaves that come before flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living one, in comparison to which all animal and plant life is merely parasitic. Its convulsions will throw up our discarded shells from their graves. You can melt and cast your metals into any form, but they can’t excite me like this molten earth. And not just the earth, but the institutions on it, are as malleable as clay in a potter’s hands.

Soon, not just on these banks, but on every hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes from the ground like a dormant beast from its den, seeking the sea in music, or migrating elsewhere in clouds. Thaw’s gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor’s hammer—the thaw melts; the hammer only breaks.

When the ground was partly bare and a few warm days had dried its surface a little, it was lovely to compare the first delicate shoots peeking out to the stately beauty of last year’s dead vegetation—life-everlasting, golden-rods, pinweeds, and graceful wild grasses, which often look more interesting now than in their summer peak, as if their beauty is only complete then; even cotton-grass, cattails, mulleins, johnswort, hard-hack, meadow-sweet, and other sturdy plants, still full of seeds for early birds—respectable weeds, at least, that widowed Nature wears. I was especially drawn to the arching sheaf-like top of the wool-grass; it brings summer back to winter memories, and its form is one loved by artists, bearing the same relationship to mental archetypes as astronomy does. It's an old style, older than Greek or Egyptian. Many winter phenomena suggest a tender and delicate beauty; we’re used to thinking of winter as a harsh ruler, but with lover’s gentleness, he adorns Summer’s hair.

As spring approached, red squirrels moved right under my house—two at a time, directly beneath my feet as I read or wrote—and kept up the oddest chatter and playful, gurgling sounds, louder when I stamped the floor, as if beyond fear or respect in their mania, defying me. “No you don’t—chickaree—chickaree.” They would not be reasoned with, and answered me only with unstoppable scolding.

The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with more hope than ever! The faint, silvery notes drifting over the moist, half-bare fields from the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter had music as they fell! What do histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelation matter, at a time like this? The brooks sing carols to the spring. The marsh-hawk glides low over the meadow, hunting for the first new life. Everywhere, the sound of melting snow is heard in the hollows, and ice quickly disappears from the ponds. The grass flames along the hillsides like a spring fire—“et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata”—as if earth sends out an inner warmth to greet the sun; not yellow but green is its flame—the color of youth—the grass-blade, a green ribbon streaming from the sod into summer, checked by frost but soon pushing on, lifting a spear of last year’s hay with the new life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes from the ground—indeed, in June's dry days, the grass-blades are the rills’ channels, and each year the herds drink from this perennial green stream, and the mower harvests their supply for winter. So our human life dies back but rises again, putting forth its green blade to eternity.

Walden is melting quickly. There is a canal two rods wide along the north and west sides, wider still at the east end. A large segment of ice has broken free from the main body. From the shore, I hear a song-sparrow—*olit*, *olit*, *olit,*—*chip*, *chip*, *chip*, *che char*,—*che wiss*, *wiss*, *wiss*. He’s helping to crack the ice. How beautiful the sweeping curves of ice’s edge, echoing the shoreline but more regular! The ice is unusually hard from the recent severe cold, and it’s as glossy as a palace floor. But the wind slides futilely over its dull surface until it reaches living water beyond. It’s magnificent to see this water ribbon gleaming in the sun, the exposed pond beaming with youth, as if it showed the joy of the fish and sand within—like a single lively fish, or the scales of a *leuciscus*. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again—though this spring, the thaw was steadier, as I’ve said.

The change from storms and winter to mild, bright days—dark, sluggish hours giving way to light, elastic ones—is a major turning point, announced everywhere in nature. Suddenly, a flood of light filled my house, even as evening neared and winter’s clouds still hung and the eaves dripped with icy rain. Looking out, I saw that where yesterday was cold gray ice, now there was the clear pond, already calm and hopeful as a summer evening, mirroring a summer sky in its surface, though none could be seen above—as if it communicated with some distant horizon. From afar, I heard a robin—the first in, it felt, thousands of years, whose song I would not forget for countless more—the same sweet, powerful music as ever. Oh, the evening robin at the end of a New England summer day! If only I could ever spot the twig he sits on! I mean *he*; I mean *the twig*. This is not, at any rate, *Turdus migratorius*. The pitch-pines and shrub-oaks near my house, which had long drooped, suddenly regained their character, looking brighter, greener, sturdier—truly cleansed and restored by the rain. I knew then that it would rain no more. You can tell, by any twig or even your woodpile, whether winter is truly over. As it got darker, I was startled by the *honking* of geese flying low over the woods, like tired travelers from southern lakes, venting complaints and comfort. Standing at my door I could hear their wings beating; then, noticing my light, they wheeled around and landed in the pond. So I went inside, shut the door, and spent my first spring night in the woods.

In the morning, I watched the geese through the doorway and the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods away, so many and boisterous that Walden looked like an artificial pond made for them. When I walked to the shore they rose at once, wings beating at their leader’s signal, circled overhead—twenty-nine of them—then flew straight for Canada, the leader letting out a *honk* every so often, counting on finding a frostier breakfast. At the same time a flock of ducks rose and followed north, trailing after their louder cousins.

For a week I heard the wandering, searching calls of some lone goose on foggy mornings, searching for its mate and lending the woods the sound of a larger life than they could hold. In April, pigeons appeared again, speeding by in small flocks; then the martins chirped over my clearing, though I’d have thought the whole town had too few for me to get any—yet I fancied they were descended from the old race that nested in hollow trees before white men came. In nearly every climate, the tortoise and frog are spring’s harbingers; birds fill the sky with colors and song, plants bloom, and winds blow, correcting the poles’ slight tilt and maintaining Nature’s balance.

Just as each season feels best in its turn, the arrival of spring feels like chaos becoming cosmos and the dawn of a Golden Age.—

“Eurus ad Auroram Nabathæaque regna recessit,

Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis.”

“The East Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathæan kingdom,

And the Persian, and the ridges exposed to the morning rays—

Man was born. Whether that Creator of things,  
The source of a better world, made him from divine seed;  
Or the earth, being fresh and just separated from the high  
Ether, retained some seeds from its related heaven.”

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. In the same way, our prospects brighten with the arrival of better thoughts. We would be blessed if we always lived in the present and took advantage of every chance that came our way, like the grass, which shows the effects of even the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time making up for missed opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We linger in winter, even though it is already spring. On a pleasant spring morning, everyone’s mistakes are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While the sun continues to shine and warm, even the worst sinner may return. Through our own regained innocence, we see the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday as a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and only pitied or despised him, and despaired about the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating the world, and you meet him at some calm work, and see how his worn and corrupted veins fill with quiet joy and welcome the new day. He feels the spring’s influence with the innocence of childhood, and all his faults are forgotten. Around him there is not only a sense of good will, but even a trace of holiness searching for expression, blindly and perhaps ineffectively, like a newborn instinct, and for a short while the southern hillside echoes no crude joke. You see some innocent new shoots getting ready to burst from his rough bark and to try another year’s life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why does the jailer not leave the prison doors open—why does the judge not dismiss his case—why does the preacher not dismiss his congregation? It is because they do not heed the hint God gives them, or accept the pardon he freely offers to all.

“A return to goodness created each day by the calm and kind breath of the morning, makes one, in his love of virtue and hatred of vice, come a little closer to man’s original nature, like the sprouts in a forest that has been cut down. In the same way, the evil one does in the course of a day prevents the seeds of virtue, which had just begun to grow again, from developing and destroys them.

“After the seeds of virtue have been prevented many times from growing, then the kind breath of evening no longer suffices to preserve them. As soon as the breath of evening is no longer enough to keep them, then a man’s nature is not much different from that of an animal. Men, seeing this man’s nature resemble that of a brute, think he never had the natural faculty of reason. Are those the real and natural feelings of man?”

“The Golden Age was created first, which, without any avenger,  
Naturally cherished fidelity and honesty, without law.  
Punishment and fear were unknown; nor were threatening words seen  
On hanging bronze tablets; nor did the anxious crowd fear  
The words of their judge; but were safe without revenge.  
As yet, the pine cut down from the mountains had not  
Descended to the flowing waves so as to see a foreign world,  
And mortals knew no shores except their own.

There was everlasting spring, and gentle winds with warm  
Breaths soothed the flowers born without seed.”

On April 29th, as I was fishing from the riverbank near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the shaking grass and willow roots where the muskrats hide, I heard a curious rattling sound, somewhat like the sticks boys play with their fingers. Looking up, I saw 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 shone like satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconry and the nobility and poetry associated with that sport. It seemed to me it might be called the Merlin, but I do not care for its name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever seen. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but it played with proud confidence in the fields of air; rising again and again with its strange chuckle, repeating its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then regaining from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set foot on *terra firma*. It seemed to have no companion in the world—playing there alone—and to need none but the morning and the ether it played with. It was not lonely, but instead made the earth beneath it seem lonely. Where was the parent that hatched it, its kin, and its father in the sky? The tenant of the air, it seemed connected to the earth only by an egg hatched sometime in the crack of a crag;—or was its true nest made at the edge of a cloud, woven out of the rainbow’s trimmings and the sunset sky, lined with some soft midsummer haze taken from earth? Its eyrie now some cliffy cloud.

Along with this I caught a fine batch of golden and silver and bright coppery fishes, which looked like a string of jewels. Ah! I have wandered into those meadows on many a first spring morning, leaping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and woods were flooded with a pure and radiant light that would have woken the dead, if they had been sleeping in their graves, as some believe. There can be no stronger proof of immortality. Everything must live in such a light. O Death, where was your sting? O Grave, where was your victory, then?

Our village life would stagnate if not for the unexplored forests and meadows surrounding it. We need the tonic of wildness—to sometimes wade in marshes where the bittern and meadow-hen hide, and hear the boom of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary bird nests, and the mink crawls low to the ground. While we eagerly seek to learn and understand everything, we also need everything to be somewhat mysterious and unfathomable, that land and sea remain infinitely wild, unsurveyed and immeasurable by us, because they are beyond all measurement. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of its inexhaustible energy, grand and massive features, the seashore with its wrecks, the wilderness with living and decaying trees, the thundercloud, and the rain that falls for weeks and brings floods. We need to see our boundaries surpassed, and to witness some life grazing freely where we never roam. We feel encouraged when we watch the vulture feeding on what repels and disheartens us and gaining health and vigor from it. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which sometimes made me take another route, especially at night when the air was heavy, but the reassurance of Nature’s strong appetite and unbreakable health made up for this. I love seeing that Nature is so full of life that countless creatures can be sacrificed and allowed to prey on each other; that delicate forms can be so calmly wiped out of existence like pulp—tadpoles swallowed by herons, tortoises and toads run over in the road; and sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! Given the risk of accidents, we must see how insignificant they truly are. What a wise person sees is universal innocence. Poison is not really poisonous, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a fragile ground. It must be quick; its pleas cannot be set in stone.

Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees just starting to bud in the pine woods around the pond brought a brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially on cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on the hillsides here and there. On the third or fourth of May, I saw a loon on the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whippoorwill, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood-thrush long before. The phoebe had already returned and looked in at my door and window to see if my house was cave-like enough for her, hovering on humming wings with clenched claws, as if she held herself up by the air, while surveying the place. Soon, the yellow pollen from the pitch pine covered the pond, the stones, and rotten wood along the shore, so you could have gathered a barrel full. This is the “sulphur showers” we hear about. Even in Kalidasa’s play *Sakuntala*, we read of “rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the lotus.” And so the seasons rolled on into summer, as one strolls into taller and taller grass.

Thus ended my first year living in the woods; the second year was much the same. I finally left Walden on September 6th, 1847.

## Conclusion

To the sick, doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Thank Heaven, this is not the whole world. The buckeye does not grow in New England, and the mockingbird is rarely heard here. The wild goose is more cosmopolitan than we are; it breakfasts in Canada, has lunch in Ohio, and settles in for the night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons, grazing on the pastures of Colorado only until a fresher and sweeter grass calls to him by the Yellowstone. Yet we imagine that if we remove rail fences and stack up stone walls on our farms, we are setting the limits of our lives and fixing our fate. If you are appointed town clerk, forsooth, you cannot travel to Tierra del Fuego this summer; but you may still visit the land of infernal fire, all the same. The universe is larger than our perspective of it.

Yet we should more often look over the taffrail of our vessel, like curious passengers, and not make this voyage like dull sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is merely the home of our correspondent. Our journeying is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors’ remedies are only for surface ailments. One rushes to Southern Africa to hunt giraffes; but surely, that is not the real quest. Honestly, how long would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks might offer rare sport too; but I would hope it is nobler sport to hunt oneself.—

“Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find  
A thousand regions in your mind  
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be  
Expert in home-cosmography.”

What does Africa—or the West—really stand for? Is not our own interior a blank on the map? Black, perhaps, like the unknown coast, when at last revealed. Is it the source of the Nile, the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a Northwest Passage around this continent, that we truly crave? Are these really mankind’s greatest problems? Is Franklin the only lost man, that his wife should be so determined to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be, instead, the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark, and the Frobisher of your own internal streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes—with ample supplies if you need them; and pile the empty cans in a great heap as your marker. Were preserved meats invented only for keeping meat? No, be a Columbus to new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels not of trade but of thought. Every man is sovereign over a realm compared to which the Czar’s earthly empire is only a petty state, a small mound left behind by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic without any *self*-respect, sacrificing the greater for the less. They love the earth that forms their grave, but have no sympathy for the spirit that may yet animate their body. Patriotism is a maggot in their brain. What was the meaning of the South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its fanfare and cost, but an indirect admission that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is a bridge or an inlet, still unexplored by him—but that it is easier to sail thousands of miles through cold, storms, and cannibals, on a government ship with five hundred assistants, than to explore the personal sea—the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans of one’s own being, alone.—

“Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.  
Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.”

Let them wander and inspect the farthest Australians.  
I have more of life, they more of travel.

It is not worthwhile to circle the globe just to count the cats in Zanzibar. But do this, even, until you can do better, and you may eventually find some “Symmes’ Hole” by which to finally reach your inner being. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast—all border this internal sea; yet none of their ships have dared to venture beyond sight of land, although this is surely the direct route to India. If you would learn every language and adapt to every nation’s customs, if you would travel farther than any traveler, be naturalized in every climate, and make the Sphinx dash her head against a rock, then follow the old philosopher’s advice and Explore yourself. For this, you need both keen vision and strength of will. Only the defeated and deserters go to war—cowards who run away and enlist. Begin now that farthest western path, which does not end at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor lead toward some exhausted China or Japan, but instead follows a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sunset, moonset, and finally, beyond even the earth.

It is said that Mirabeau turned to highway robbery “to learn what degree of resolution it takes to put oneself in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society.” He claimed that “a soldier who fights in ranks does not require half as much courage as a footpad,” and “that honor and religion have never stood in the way of a well-considered and firm resolve.” This was bold, as things go; yet it was idle, if not desperate. A sounder man would have found himself often enough “in formal opposition” to what are considered “the most sacred laws of society,” simply by obeying even more sacred laws, and so could have tested his resolve without going out of his way. It is not for a man to deliberately put himself in such a stance toward society, but to maintain whatever stance arises from obedience to his own nature—which will never truly be in opposition to a just government, should he encounter one.

I left the woods for just as good a reason as I went there. Maybe it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and couldn’t spare any more time for that one. It is striking how easily and subtly we fall into a specific path and make a well-trodden route for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond’s edge; and though it’s been five or six years since I last walked it, it’s still quite visible. It’s likely others have used it too, keeping it open. The earth’s surface is soft and easily impressed by men’s feet; just so, the mental paths we walk. How worn and dusty must be the world’s highways, how deep the ruts of convention and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but instead to go before the mast and on deck—the better to see the moonlight among the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

At least, this is what I learned from my experiment: if one moves confidently toward his dreams and tries to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in ordinary hours. He will leave some things behind, cross an invisible boundary; new, more universal and generous laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or old laws will be expanded and interpreted more liberally for him, and he will live with the freedom of a higher order of beings. As he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be loneliness, nor poverty be poverty, nor weakness be weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they belong. Now lay the foundations under them.

It is a comical demand from England and America that you must speak so they can understand you. Neither people nor toadstools grow that way. As though that were the important thing, when there are plenty who can understand you without them. As if Nature could sustain only one kind of intellect, not both birds and quadrupeds, fliers and crawlers, and that *hush* and *who*—which Bright can understand—make the best English. As if stupidity alone were safe. I worry mainly that my expression might not be extravagant enough—not broad enough to reach beyond the narrow boundaries of my daily experience and be fitting to the truth I know. *Extravagance!* It depends on how you are fenced in. The migratory buffalo seeking new pastures in another latitude is not extravagant, unlike the cow that knocks over the pail, leaps the fence, and chases after her calf during milking. I want to speak somewhere *without* limits—like someone awake, speaking to those awake—because I am convinced I can’t exaggerate enough even to lay a true foundation. Who, having heard a strain of music, then fears to ever speak extravagantly again? In considering the future or the possible, we should live quite loosely and undefined ahead, our outlines vague and misty in that direction, as our shadows show a quiet exhalation facing the sun. The fleeting truth of our words should always hint at the inadequacy of what remains. Their truth is instantly *translated*; only its literal monument endures. The words that express our faith and piety are not definite, yet they are significant and fragrant, like frankincense to higher beings.

Why always lower ourselves to our dullest perceptions, and praise that as common sense? The most common sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. Sometimes we are tempted to lump someone who is “once-and-a-half-witted” together with the “half-witted,” because we can grasp only a third of their insight. Some would complain about the morning’s red glow—if only they ever rose in time to see it. “They pretend,” I hear, “that Kabir’s verses have four meanings: illusion, spirit, intellect, and the Vedas’ outward doctrine;” but here, it's taken as a flaw if a man’s writing can be read in more than one way. While England works on curing potato blight, shouldn’t we be trying to cure the brain-rot which is so much more widespread and fatal?

I do not assume I have achieved obscurity, but I would be proud if the worst that could be said about my book was like what was said about Walden ice. Southern buyers objected to its blue color—which proved its purity—acting as though it were dirty, and preferred Cambridge ice, which is white but tastes of weeds. The purity men love is like the mists close to the earth, not like the blue sky beyond.

Some continually remind us Americans, and moderns generally, that we are intellectual dwarfs compared to the ancients or even to men of the Elizabethan era. But what of it? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Should a man despair and hang himself just because his kind are pygmies—and not strive to be the best pygmy he can? Let everyone mind their own business, and try to be what they were made for.

Why should we be in such a rush to succeed, and in such desperate ventures? If a man does not keep step with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drum. Let him step in time to the music he hears, however measured or distant. It’s not important that he should mature as quickly as an apple tree or an oak. Should he turn his spring into summer? If the world we were made for has not yet arrived, what value is there in any reality we might substitute? We will not wreck ourselves on a fake reality. Why, with great effort, build a heaven of blue glass over our heads, when as soon as it's done we’ll still be staring up at the real sky, as if the glass were not there?

There was once an artist in the city of Kouroo who longed for perfection. One day he resolved to make a staff. Remembering that time is a factor in imperfect work, but perfect work is timeless, he said to himself, “It shall be perfect in every way, even if I do nothing else all my life.” He immediately went to the forest to seek wood, determined it shouldn’t be made of poor material. As he searched and turned away stick after stick, his friends eventually deserted him, growing old in their own endeavors and dying, but he himself did not age, so great was his focus and devotion—it gave him perpetual youth. Since he compromised nothing with Time, Time kept away, only sighing from afar because it could not defeat him. Before he found a stock that was truly suitable, the city of Kouroo had become a gray ruin, and he sat on a mound to peel his stick. Before he shaped it, the reign of the Candahars had ended, and with the point of the staff he wrote that dynasty's final name in the sand before going on. By the time he polished the staff, Kalpa was no longer the pole star; and before he adorned it with a ferrule and a jeweled head, Brahma had awoken and slept many times. But why mention such things? When he finally finished his work, it expanded suddenly before his astonished eyes into the fairest of all Brahma’s creations. He had created a new cosmos by making his staff: a world beautifully and completely proportioned, where the old cities and dynasties had vanished but finer ones took their places. And now he saw, by the pile of shavings fresh at his feet, that for him and his work, the passage of time had been only an illusion, and that no more real time had passed than it takes for a spark from Brahma’s mind to ignite the mind of a mortal. The material was pure, and his art was pure—how could the result have been anything but wonderful?

No face we can put on anything will prove more useful in the end than the truth. Only truth lasts. Most of the time, we are not really present where we are, but put ourselves in a false position. Due to a weakness in our nature, we imagine a scenario and place ourselves inside it—so we are caught in two realities at once, and it becomes much harder to escape. In moments of sanity, we face only the facts, the current case. Say what you have to say, not what you’re supposed to say. Any truth is better than pretense. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. “Tell the tailors,” he said, “to remember to tie a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch.” His companion’s prayer is forgotten.

However humble your life may be, face it and live it; don’t avoid it or call it harsh names. It isn’t as bad as you are. Life seems poorest when you are at your richest. The fault-finder would find flaws even in paradise. Love your life, no matter how poor it may be. Even in the poorhouse, you may have enjoyable, exciting, and glorious moments. The setting sun reflects off the alms-house windows just as brightly as it does from the mansion; the snow melts before its door just as soon in the spring. I don’t see why a peaceful mind couldn’t live as contentedly there, and have just as uplifting thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor often seem to me to live the most independent lives of all. Perhaps they are simply great enough to accept help without hesitation. Most people think they are above being supported by the town; but it often happens that they aren’t above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should actually be more shameful. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Don’t trouble yourself too much about acquiring new things, whether they be 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 ensure you do not lack companionship. If I were confined to a corner of an attic all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as wide to me as long as I had my thoughts. The philosopher said: “From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and throw it into confusion; from the most abject and vulgar man, no one can take away his thoughts.” Don’t be anxious to “develop” yourself, or to subject yourself to many influences to be acted on by others—it’s all dissipation. Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and lowliness gather around us, “and lo! creation widens to our view.” We are often reminded that, even if we were given the wealth of Croesus, our goals must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Furthermore, if you are limited in your opportunities by poverty, if you can’t buy books or newspapers, for example, you are simply forced to focus on the richest and most vital experiences; you must work with material that gives the most substance. Life near the bone is where it is sweetest. You are kept from being frivolous. No one ever loses by being magnanimous on a higher level while on a lower one. Excessive wealth can only purchase superfluities. Money isn’t needed to buy one necessity of the soul.

I live in the angle of a leaden wall, with a little bell metal mixed into its makeup. Often, as I rest at midday, I hear a confused *tintinnabulum* from outside. It’s the noise of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they’ve met at the dinner table; but I’m no more interested in such tales than in the contents of the Daily Times. The talk and interest are mostly about costumes and manners; yet a goose is still a goose, no matter how you dress it. They speak to me of California and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the Hon. Mr. —— of Georgia or Massachusetts—these are all passing and transitory things, till I’m almost ready to leap from their courtyard like the Mameluke bey. I like to find my bearings—not march in parades with pomp and ceremony in some public place, but to walk in step with the Builder of the universe, if I can—not to live restlessly and busily in this trivial nineteenth century, but to stand or sit in thoughtful stillness while it passes by. What are people celebrating? Everyone is on a committee of arrangements, always expecting someone to give a speech. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I like to weigh, to settle, to lean toward whatever attracts me most strongly and rightfully—not to try to weigh less by hanging from the scale—not to suppose a case, but take things as they really are; to walk the only path I can, the one on which nothing can resist me. I get no satisfaction from beginning to build an arch before having a solid foundation. Let’s not play at kittly-benders. There’s a firm base everywhere. We read about the traveler who asked a boy if the swamp ahead had solid ground. The boy replied it did. Yet soon the traveler’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he said, “I thought you said this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” the boy answered, “but you haven’t reached it yet.” It’s just the same with the bogs and quicksands of society; but only an old hand knows it. Only what is thought, said, or done at some rare and right moment is truly good. I’d never be one of those who foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plaster; that would keep me up at night. Give me a hammer, and let me search for the furring. Don’t rely on putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so securely that you can wake at night and think of your work with pride—a job at which you would not blush to invoke the Muse. That’s how God will help you, and only that way. Every nail driven should be like another rivet in the machine of the universe, with you doing your part of the work.

Rather than love, money, or fame, give me truth. I sat at a table covered in rich food and wine, with attentive servants, but sincerity and truth were not there; I left that inhospitable board hungry. The hospitality was as cold as the ices served. I thought they didn’t need ice to freeze their manners. They spoke about the age and fame of the wine; but I thought about an older, newer, and purer wine, from a more glorious vintage, which they didn’t have and couldn’t buy. The style—the house and grounds, the “entertainment”—matter nothing to me. I called on the king, but he made me wait in his hall, and acted like a man unable to show hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I’d have done better to call on him.

How long will we sit in our porches practicing idle, outdated virtues, which any kind of work would make irrelevant? As if someone were to begin the day with a show of patience, hire a man to hoe his potatoes, and then go out in the afternoon to practice Christian meekness and charity with deliberate intent! Consider the pride and stagnant self-satisfaction of mankind. This generation tends to congratulate itself on being the last in a noble line; and in Boston, London, Paris, and Rome, thinking of its long heritage, it speaks with pleasure of its progress in art, science, and literature. There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies and public Eulogies of *Great Men!* It is like good Adam admiring his own virtue. “Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs that will never die”—that is, as long as *we* can remember them. The learned societies and great men of Assyria—where are they now? What youthful philosophers and experimenters we are! Not one of my readers has yet lived a complete human life. These may be just the spring months in the life of the human race. If we’ve experienced the seven-years’ itch, we haven’t yet seen the seventeen-year locust in Concord. We know only a thin layer of the earth we live on. Most people haven’t dug six feet below the surface, or leaped that high above it. We don’t know where we are. Besides, we spend nearly half our time asleep. Still, we consider ourselves wise, with an established order on the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, ambitious spirits! As I stand over the insect crawling among the pine needles on the forest floor, trying to hide from me, I wonder why it clings to such lowly thoughts and hides its head from one who might, perhaps, be its benefactor and bring some uplifting news to its kind, I am reminded of the far greater Benefactor and Intelligence who watches over me, the human insect.

There is a constant stream of novelty in the world, and yet we put up with incredible dullness. I only have to mention the sort of sermons still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are words like joy and sorrow, but they are just the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mediocre. We think we can only change our clothes. The British Empire is said to be very large and respectable, and the United States a great power. We don’t realize that a tide rises and falls in every man which could float the British Empire like a chip, if he only embraced it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will come out of the ground next? The government of the world I live in wasn’t formed, like Britain’s, in after-dinner conversations over wine.

The life in us is like water in a river. It might rise higher this year than anyone has seen and flood dry lands; perhaps this will be the important year that washes away all our muskrats. It wasn’t always dry land where we now live. I see far inland the banks left by the stream before science recorded its floods. Everyone has heard the story told across New England, about a strong and beautiful bug that emerged from the dry leaf of an old apple-wood table, which had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, later in Massachusetts—from an egg deposited in the living tree years before, as shown by counting the layers around it; after being hatched, perhaps, by the heat of the urn, it was heard gnawing its way out for weeks. Who doesn’t feel their faith in resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing this? Who knows what beautiful, winged life, whose egg has lain buried for ages under many layers of lifelessness in the dry, dead wood of society—deposited first in the living tree’s sapwood, now transformed into its seasoned tomb—might now be gnawing its way free, as the amazed family sits around their table, ready to emerge from society’s most familiar and long-used furniture, to at last enjoy its perfect summer life!

I don’t say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the nature of that tomorrow which mere passage of time can never bring about. The light that blinds us is darkness to us. Only that day dawns for which we are awake. There is more day yet to dawn. The sun is only a morning star.

THE END

## ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

I wholeheartedly accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least;" and I would like to see this put into effect more quickly and consistently. If fully carried out, it amounts to this, which I also believe—"That government is best which governs not at all;" and when people are ready for it, that will be the form of government they have. At best, government is only an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments sometimes, inexpedient. The arguments made against a standing army—which are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail—may also eventually be used against a standing government. The standing army is simply an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is just the way people have chosen to carry out their will, can just as easily be abused and misused before the people can act through it. Consider the current Mexican war, the work of a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; in the beginning, the people would not have agreed to this measure.

This American government—what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, trying to pass itself on to the future, but losing some of its integrity every moment? It does not have the life and power of a single person; a single person can bend it to his will. It is like a wooden gun to the people; and if they ever used it seriously against each other, it would surely break apart. Still, it is not unnecessary for this reason; people must have some complicated machinery, and hear its noise, to satisfy their idea of government. Governments demonstrate how well people can be fooled, even fool themselves, for their own benefit. It is excellent in that way, we must all admit; yet this government has never advanced any project, except by getting out of the way quickly. *It* doesn’t keep the country free. *It* doesn’t settle the West. *It* doesn’t educate. The character innate in the American people has achieved all these things; it would have done more if the government had not sometimes gotten in the way. Government is an expedient by which people try to leave one another alone; and, as has been said, government is most useful when it leaves people alone the most. Trade and commerce, if they were not as resilient as India rubber, would never make it over the obstacles legislators are always placing in their path; if you judged these men solely by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be grouped with, and punished like, those troublemakers who put debris on the railroads.

But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I do not ask for no government now, but *immediately* for a better government. Let every man declare what kind of government would earn his respect, and that will be a step toward getting it.

After all, the real reason why, when power is in the people’s hands, a majority is allowed, and for a long time continues, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be right, or because it seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But any government in which the majority always rules cannot be based on justice, even as men understand it. Can there not be a government where majorities don't decide what is right and wrong, but conscience does?—where majorities decide only questions where practicality applies? Must the citizen ever, even for an instant, surrender his conscience to the legislator? Why, then, does every man have a conscience? I think we ought to be men first, and subjects afterward. It is less important to train respect for the law than for what is right. The only obligation I have the right to accept is always doing what I believe is right. It is true enough that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation *with* a conscience. Laws never made people any more just; and, through their respect for law, even good people are daily made agents of injustice. One common and natural result of undue respect for the law is that you see a file of soldiers—colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys and all—marching obediently to war, against their wills, indeed against their common sense and their consciences, which makes the marching even more difficult and causes their hearts to pound. They have no doubt it is a terrible business they’re involved in; they are all naturally peaceful. So what are they really? Men at all? Or just small movable forts and magazines at the disposal of some ruthless man in authority? Go to the Navy Yard, and look at a marine—a man turned into what the American government can make of a man, or what its dark arts can do: a mere shadow and memory of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, already, one might say, buried under arms with all the trappings of a funeral, though it may be

“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,  
    As his corpse to the ramparts we hurried;  
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot  
    O’er the grave where our hero we buried.”

Most men serve the State this way, not as men, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, the militia, jailers, constables, *posse comitatus*, etc. In most cases there is no free use of reason or moral sense at all; instead, they put themselves on the level of wood and earth and stone; and wooden men could probably serve just as well. Such people command no more respect than straw men or a clump of dirt. They have the same value as horses and dogs. Yet even these are often considered good citizens. Others, such as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the State mainly with their intellect; and, since they seldom make moral distinctions, they are just as likely to serve the devil, without *meaning* to, as to serve God. A very few, such as heroes, patriots, martyrs, true reformers, and *men*, serve the State with their consciences too, and therefore mostly resist it; and these are usually treated as enemies. A wise man will only serve others as a *man*, and won’t let himself be “clay,” or “stop a hole to keep the wind away,” but will leave that job to his ashes at least:

“I am too high-born to be propertied,  
To be a secondary at control,  
Or useful serving-man and instrument  
To any sovereign state throughout the world.”

He who gives himself entirely to others seems useless and selfish to them; but the one who gives himself partly is considered a benefactor and philanthropist.

How should a man act toward the American government today? I believe he cannot associate with it without disgrace. I cannot, even for a moment, recognize as *my* government the political entity that is also the *slave’s* government.

Everyone acknowledges the right of revolution: the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government when its tyranny or incompetence becomes overwhelming and unbearable. But almost all people claim that is not the case at this moment. They think such circumstances existed during the Revolution of ’75. If someone told me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain imported goods, I probably would not make a fuss about it, since I can live without those imports; all machines have their friction, and perhaps that friction does enough good to make up for its harm. In any case, it is a greater evil to cause a commotion over it. But when the friction becomes an entire machine in itself, and oppression and robbery become systematized, I say we should no longer have such a machine at all. In other words, when a sixth of the population in a country that takes pride in being a refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole nation is unjustly invaded and ruled by a foreign military force, I believe it is not too soon for honest people to rebel and revolutionize. This duty becomes even more urgent because the invaded country isn’t ours; rather, our army is the invader.

Paley, a common authority on moral questions for many, in his chapter on the “Duty of Submission to Civil Government,” bases all civil obligation on expediency. He claims, “that so long as the interest of the entire society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconvenience, it is the will of God that the established government be obeyed, and no longer.”—“This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a calculation of the extent of danger and grievance on one side, and the likelihood and cost of redressing it on the other.” He says each man must judge this for himself. But Paley seems never to have considered those situations where the rule of expediency does not apply—where a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, no matter the cost. If I have unjustly snatched a plank from a drowning man, I must return it to him even if doing so causes me to drown. Paley would call this inconvenient. But one who would save his own life like that, in truth, loses it. This nation must stop holding slaves and making war on Mexico, even if that means ceasing to exist as a people.

In practice, nations agree with Paley; but does anyone believe Massachusetts is doing exactly the right thing at this critical time?

“A drab of state, a cloth-o’-silver slut,  
To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt.”

In practical terms, the opponents to reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians in the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who care more about commerce and agriculture than humanity, and are not willing to do right by the slave and to Mexico, *no matter the cost*. My quarrel is not with distant foes, but with those close to home who help and obey those distant ones, without whose aid the latter would be harmless. We often say that the masses are unprepared; yet progress is slow because the few are not much wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many become as good as you, as that there is at least some true virtue in the world—because this will eventually influence the rest. There are thousands who *in opinion* are against slavery and the war, who nonetheless do nothing to end them; who, thinking themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit with their hands in their pockets and say they don't know what to do, then proceed to do nothing; who even place the issue of freedom after that of free-trade, calmly read market prices along with the latest news from Mexico after dinner, and perhaps fall asleep over both. What value does the honest man or patriot command these days? They hesitate, express regret, and sometimes petition; but they never do anything serious or effective. They wait for others to fix the problem so they will have nothing left to regret. At most, they cast a cheap vote and weakly support the right as it passes by. There are 999 supporters of virtue for every one truly virtuous person; but it is easier to deal with an actual owner of something than with its temporary overseer.

Voting is a kind of gambling, like checkers or backgammon, with a faint trace of morality—a game with right and wrong, with moral issues; and betting inevitably goes along with it. The voter's character is not on the line. I cast my vote, perhaps as I think is right; but I am not truly committed to seeing that right win. I'm willing to let the majority decide. Its obligation, therefore, never goes beyond expediency. Even voting *for what is right* accomplishes *nothing* for it. It only communicates weakly to others your desire for its success. A wise man won't leave justice to chance, nor wish for it to triumph by sheer majority. There's very little virtue in the mass actions of people. When the majority finally votes to end slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to it, or because there's little slavery left to abolish. At that point, *they* will be the only slaves. Only *his* vote can speed up the end of slavery—he who declares his own freedom by his vote.

I hear talk of conventions in Baltimore or elsewhere to select a presidential candidate, made up mostly of editors and career politicians; but I think, what does it matter to any truly independent, intelligent, and respectable man what they decide? Won't we still benefit from his wisdom and honesty? Aren't there many in this country who never go to conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so-called, immediately abandons his position and despairs over his country at the very moment his country has more cause to despair over him. He promptly supports one of the handpicked candidates as the only *available* one, demonstrating that he himself is *available* for whatever purpose a demagogue might have. His vote is worth no more than that of any corrupt foreigner or paid-off native. Oh for a real *man*, one who, as my neighbor says, has a backbone you cannot push your hand through! Our statistics must be wrong: our population figures are far too high. How many *men* are there per thousand square miles in this country? Barely one. Does America offer any reason for real men to settle here? The American has shrunk down to an Odd Fellow—recognizable by his highly developed instinct for joining groups and clear lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose chief concern, upon joining the world, is to ensure alms-houses are maintained; and, before he’s even matured, to raise funds for potential widows and orphans; and, in short, dares to live only by the help of a Mutual Insurance company that has promised him a proper burial.

It is not necessarily a man’s duty to devote himself to eliminating even the greatest wrong; he may rightfully have other concerns; but it is his duty, at a minimum, to wash his hands of it, and if he is done thinking about it, at least not to support it in practice. If I focus on other pursuits and reflections, I must first at least make sure I’m not pursuing them while sitting on another person’s shoulders. I must get off him first, so he too can reflect. Consider the shocking inconsistency we tolerate. Some of my townsmen have said, “I’d like to see them try to order me to suppress a slave insurrection, or march to Mexico—see if I’d go”; yet these same men, directly through their allegiance and indirectly through their money, have provided a substitute instead. We applaud the soldier who refuses to fight in an unjust war, yet those doing the applauding do not refuse to support the unjust government that started the war; they praise the man for disregarding and defying their very own authority; as if the State was so repentant it hired someone to punish it while it continued to sin, but not repentant enough to stop sinning for even a moment. Thus, in the name of Order and Civil Government, we end up supporting our own baseness. After the initial shame of wrongdoing comes indifference to it; and before long, it becomes, in a way, *un*moral—no longer necessary, yet an accepted part of the life we've constructed.

The greatest and most widespread errors require the most impartial virtue to counteract them. The faint blame usually attached to patriotism is most likely to touch the noble. Those who, disapproving of the government and its actions, still give it their support and allegiance, are truly its most conscientious backers, and therefore often the greatest obstacles to reform. Some now petition the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the President’s demands. Why don’t they break the union between themselves and the State, and stop paying their share into its treasury? Don’t they stand in the same relation to the State as the State does to the Union? Haven’t the same reasons kept the State from resisting the Union as have kept them from resisting the State?

How can a person be content just to have an opinion and enjoy it? Is there any real satisfaction in that, if his opinion tells him he’s being wronged? If a neighbor cheats you out of a dollar, you won’t be content knowing or saying you’ve been cheated, or just petitioning him for what you’re due; you act decisively to recover your money and ensure you’re not cheated again. Action based on principle—the perception and doing of what is right—changes things and relationships; it is, at its core, revolutionary, and incompatible with the status quo. It does not only divide states and churches; it divides families—yes, even the *individual*, separating the evil within from the divine.

Unjust laws exist: should we simply obey them, try to amend and obey them until successful, or break them at once? Most people, in a country like this, think they should wait until the majority has been persuaded to change them. They say that resisting would be worse than the evil they resist. But it's the government’s own fault if the remedy is worse than the evil; *it* is what makes it so. Why doesn’t the government work harder to anticipate and facilitate reform? Why doesn’t it appreciate the wisdom of its minorities? Why does it panic and resist before it is even harmed? Why doesn’t it encourage citizens to point out its flaws and try to do better than it would itself? Why does it always persecute Christ, exile Copernicus and Luther, and label Washington and Franklin as traitors?

It seems that the only offense never imagined by government is a practical and deliberate denial of its own authority; if not, why hasn’t it assigned a specific, suitable, and proportionate penalty for such an act? If a man without property refuses just once to earn nine shillings for the State, he can be imprisoned for a period not set by law, but determined by the discretion of those who put him there; but if he steals ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon allowed back into society.

If an injustice is just the unavoidable friction of government’s machinery, let it be—it may wear smooth, or the whole machine may wear out. If the injustice has its own spring, pulley, rope, or crank, then maybe you should weigh whether the remedy is worse than the evil; but if it’s such that it needs you as its agent, then I say: break the law. Let your life act as a counter friction to bring the machine to a stop. My responsibility is to make sure, at least, that I don't participate in the wrong I oppose.

When it comes to using the remedies the State provides to address such evils, I’m not aware of any that suffice. They take too much time, and a man’s life is short. I have other things to do. I did not come into this world mainly to make it a good place to live, but to live in it, good or bad. A man doesn’t have to do everything, but he must do something; and just because he can’t do *everything* doesn’t mean he should do *something* wrong. I am under no more duty to petition the Governor or Legislature than they are to petition me; and if they refuse my petition, what then? In this instance the State hasn’t even made a way: its Constitution itself is the injustice. This might sound harsh, stubborn, and unyielding; but it treats, with utmost kindness and respect, the only spirit that merits it or is able to understand it. All positive change is like birth or death—an upheaval of the body.

I have no hesitation stating that those who call themselves abolitionists should immediately and effectively withdraw both personal and material support from the government of Massachusetts, instead of waiting until they’re a majority of one before letting what’s right prevail. For me, it is sufficient to have God on their side without waiting for a single additional person. Furthermore, any man more right than his neighbors already counts as a majority of one.

I encounter the American government, or its representative the State government, directly and face to face only once a year, through the tax collector; this is the only way a man living as I do must meet it; and it clearly says, Recognize me; the simplest and most effective, and, in present circumstances, the most necessary way to deal with it is to refuse recognition. The tax-gatherer, my civil neighbor, is the very person I must confront—for ultimately, my quarrel is with people, not documents—and he has freely chosen to serve as an agent of government. How will he ever understand what he is and does, either as a government official or a man, until he must choose whether to treat me, his neighbor and a well-meaning man, as another neighbor, or as a madman and troublemaker, and see if he can get past this obstacle to his neighborliness without more harsh thoughts or words? I know this: if one thousand, or one hundred, or even just ten men whom I could name—if only ten *honest* men—yes, if *one* HONEST man in Massachusetts, *now that it has ceased to hold slaves*, would truly withdraw from this partnership and be jailed for it, slavery in America would end. The smallest good deed, once done, is done forever. But we’d rather talk about it: we say that’s our mission. Reform employs many newspapers, but not one person. If my worthy neighbor, the State ambassador who spends his days discussing human rights in the Council Chamber, instead of facing threats of prison in Carolina, should choose to be imprisoned in Massachusetts—which is eager to blame slavery on its sister states, though it can only fault them for unkindness now—the Legislature would not ignore the subject the following winter.

Under a government that unjustly imprisons, the just man belongs also in prison. The best place today—the only one Massachusetts currently offers her freer and more hopeful citizens—is her prisons; to be cast out and locked out by their own State, just as they have already excluded themselves by their principles. It's there the fugitive slave, the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian pleading his people’s case should find their allies; on separate, but truly freer and more honorable ground, among those whom the State places not *with* but *against* her—the only home in a slave state where a free man can reside with honor. If anyone believes their influence would be lost there, that their voices would no longer trouble the State, that jailed they would not be a threat within its borders, they do not understand how much stronger truth is than error, or how much more forcefully and effectively one can fight injustice who’s suffered it himself. Cast your entire vote, not just a piece of paper, but your full influence. A minority is powerless if it conforms to the majority; then it isn’t even a minority; but it is irresistible when it resists with all its strength. If the choice is to imprison all just men, or give up war and slavery, the State won’t hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men refused to pay their taxes this year, that would not be a violent or bloody act, compared to paying them and helping the State commit violence and spill innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceful revolution, if any such thing is possible. If a tax collector or other public officer asks me, as one has, “But what should I do?” I would answer: “If you sincerely want to do something, resign your office.” When a citizen has withdrawn his allegiance, and the officer has resigned, the revolution is complete. Suppose even that blood should flow. Isn’t there a kind of bloodshed when conscience is wounded? Through that wound, a man’s true humanity and immortality flow away—and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing even now.

I have thought more about imprisoning the offender than seizing his property—though either serves the same end—because those who stand for the purest justice, and are therefore most dangerous to a corrupt State, usually haven't spent much time gathering wealth. The State serves such people very little, so even a small tax feels outrageous, especially if they must earn it through extra labor. If someone lived entirely without money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it from him. But the rich man—not to draw any unfair comparison—is always sold to the institution that makes him rich. To be frank, the more money, the less virtue; because money comes between a man and his goals, and achieves them for him—and there’s no virtue in that. Money settles questions a person would otherwise need to resolve for himself, while only one new question arises: how to spend it, which is a difficult but unnecessary dilemma. Thus his moral stance is taken away. The chances to truly live diminish as so-called “means” increase. The best thing a rich man can do for his development is pursue the dreams he had when he was poor. Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. “Show me the tribute-money,” he said; and someone took out a penny;—if you use money stamped with Caesar’s image, which he has made valuable, if, in other words, you are part of the State and gladly take advantage of its benefits, then when Caesar demands some of it back, return to Caesar what belongs to him, and to God what belongs to God—leaving them no wiser about which is which; because they did not truly wish to know.

When I speak with my most independent neighbors, I see that despite what they say about the seriousness of the situation and their desire for public peace, the real issue is that they cannot do without the government’s protection and worry about the consequences of defying it for their property and their families. For myself, I would hate to think I rely on the State’s protection. But if I refuse the State’s authority when it demands its taxes, it will soon seize and waste everything I own, and persecute me and my children endlessly. This is hard. It makes it impossible to live honestly and still live comfortably by outward standards. Accumulating property is pointless; it will inevitably be taken away. You have to rent or squat, grow a little food, eat it soon, live within yourself, and be always ready to leave at a moment’s notice, not get involved in many affairs. A man may even become wealthy in Turkey, if he is an entirely obedient subject of the Turkish government. Confucius said, “If a State is governed by reason, poverty and misery are shameful; if a State is not governed by reason, wealth and honors are shameful.” No—unless I want Massachusetts’s protection in some southern port where my liberty may be threatened, or unless I am entirely focused on building wealth at home through peaceful work, I am able to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her claims on my life and property. In every sense, it costs me less to bear the consequences of opposing the State than to obey it. If I obeyed, I would feel somehow lessened by it.

Some years ago, the State approached me on behalf of the church and ordered me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose preaching my father attended, though I never did myself. “Pay it,” they said, “or be locked up in jail.” I refused to pay. But, unfortunately, someone else chose to pay it. I did not understand why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, but not the priest to support the schoolmaster; for I was not the State’s schoolmaster, but supported myself through voluntary subscriptions. I did not see why the lyceum should not present its tax bill and have the State enforce its demand just as the church did. However, at the request of the selectmen, I agreed to make a statement in writing:—“Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined.” I gave this to the town clerk, and he kept it. Once the State realized that I did not wish to be considered a member of that church, it never made a similar demand on me again, though at that time it insisted on its original presumption. If I had known how to name them all, I would have officially withdrawn from every society I never joined; but I did not know where to find such a complete list.

I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was once put in jail for one night because of this; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the wooden and iron door, a foot thick, and the iron grating that strained the light, I couldn’t help but notice the absurdity of that institution treating me as if I were nothing more than flesh, blood, and bone, to be locked away. I wondered that it had eventually decided this was the best use it could make of me, never thinking to use my abilities in some other way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my fellow townsmen, there was an even more difficult one to climb or break through before they could become as free as I was. I never, for a moment, felt confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone among my townsmen had paid my tax. They clearly did not know how to deal with me, but acted like people who lack good manners. Every threat and every compliment was a blunder; they thought my principal desire was to be on the other side of that stone wall. I couldn’t help but smile at how hard they worked to lock the door on my thoughts, which left with them just as freely as before, and in reality were the only dangerous things. Since they couldn’t reach me, they decided to punish my body; just as boys, unable to get at someone they dislike, will take it out on his dog. I saw that the State was lacking in sense; it was timid, like a solitary woman with her silver spoons, unable to distinguish its friends from its enemies. I lost all remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

Thus, the state never intentionally engages with a man’s intellect or morality, but only with his body and senses. It is not equipped with superior wit or honesty, but only with superior physical power. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe in my own way. Let us see who is truly stronger. What power does a multitude have? Only those who obey a higher law than I do can force me, because they compel me to become like themselves. I do not hear of *men* being *forced* to live one way or another by crowds of people. What kind of life would that be? When I meet a government which says to me, “Your money or your life,” why should I quickly give it my money? Maybe it is in a desperate situation and doesn’t know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; it should do as I do. There’s no reason to complain about it. I am not responsible for making society's machinery work smoothly. I am not the engineer’s son. I see that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall together, neither remains inert for the other; both follow their own nature, and grow and flourish as best they can until one, perhaps, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so it is with a man.

The night in prison was novel and interesting enough. The prisoners in their shirt-sleeves were enjoying a conversation and the evening air in the doorway when I arrived. But the jailer said, “Come, boys, it’s time to lock up;” and so they dispersed, and I heard the sound of their footsteps as they returned to their rooms. My roommate was introduced to me by the jailer as “a first-rate fellow and a clever man.” After the door was locked, he showed me where to hang my hat and how he did things there. The rooms were whitewashed once a month, and this one, at least, was the whitest, simplest, and probably the neatest place in town. He naturally wanted to know where I was from, and what had brought me there; and, after I told him, I asked him in return how he came to be there, assuming he was an honest man, of course. As people go, I believe he was. “Why,” he said, “they accuse me of burning a barn; but I never did it.” As far as I could tell, he probably had gone to sleep in a barn while drunk, smoked his pipe, and so a barn burned down. He had the reputation of being a clever man, and had been there about three months waiting for his trial, and would have to wait as much longer; but he was quite settled and satisfied, since he got his board for nothing and felt he was well treated.

He took one window, and I the other; and I saw that, if one was there for long, his main occupation would be looking out the window. I soon read all the pamphlets left there and examined where past prisoners had tried to break out and where a grate had been sawed off, and I heard the stories of the various occupants of that room; for I found that even in jail, there was a kind of history and gossip that never left the walls. This may be the only building in town where verses are written, then printed in a circular form but never published. I was shown quite a few verses composed by some young men who tried to escape; they took their revenge by singing them.

I asked my fellow prisoner as much as I could, fearing we would not meet again; but eventually he showed me my bed and left me to blow out the lamp.

It was like traveling to a foreign land, such as I never expected to see, just spending that one night there. It seemed I had never heard the town clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which were within the iron bars. It was like seeing my hometown through the lens of the Middle Ages, with Concord transformed into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles before my eyes. The voices I heard in the streets sounded like those of old burghers. I became an involuntary observer of everything done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent inn—a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer look at my own town. I was truly inside it. I had never seen its institutions up close before. This is one of its unique institutions; for it is a shire town. I began to understand what its people were up to.

In the morning, our breakfasts were passed through a hole in the door, in small, oblong-square tin pans designed to fit, each holding a pint of chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron spoon. When they asked for the pans back, I was naive enough to return any bread I had left; but my companion took it, saying I should save it for lunch or dinner. Soon after, he was let out to work at haying in a neighboring field, where he went every day, and wouldn’t return till noon; so he wished me good-day, saying he doubted if he would see me again.

When I left prison—since someone intervened and paid the tax—I did not notice that any great changes had happened on the common, as might happen to one who went in a youth and emerged gray-haired; and yet a change had come over the world for me—the town, the State, and the country—greater than any mere passage of time could bring. I saw even more clearly the nature of the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent those around me could be trusted as good neighbors and friends: their friendship was only for fair weather; they had no strong intent to do what was right; they were a people different from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as much as Chinamen and Malays; in their efforts for humanity, they took no risks, not even to their property; and after all, they were not noble enough, for they treated thieves as the thieves had treated them, hoping by outward practices, a few prayers, and occasionally walking a particular, though pointless, path, to save their souls. Perhaps I judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe most are unaware there is even a jail in their village.

It used to be the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his friends to greet him by looking through their crossed fingers, representing the jail window bars, saying, “How do ye do?” My neighbors did not salute me thus; instead, they looked at me, then at each other, as if I had just returned from a long journey. I was put in jail as I was on my way to the shoemaker’s to fetch a repaired shoe. When I was released the next morning, I went to finish my errand, and, after putting on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party who were eager for my company; and in half an hour,—since the horse was soon hitched up,—was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles away; and then the State was out of sight.

That is the complete history of “My Prisons.”

I have never refused to pay the highway tax, because I want to be as good a neighbor as I am a bad subject; and, as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow citizens now. I refuse the tax bill not for any particular item, but because I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw from it entirely. I don’t care to follow my dollar all the way to see if it ends up buying a man or a musket; the dollar itself is innocent—but I do care about the effects of my allegiance. In truth, I quietly declare war with the State, in my own way, though I will make use of and benefit from its advantages where I can, as is usual in such conflicts.

If others pay the tax demanded of me, out of sympathy with the State, they merely do what they have already done themselves, or rather, they contribute to injustice even more than the State requires. If they pay out of mistaken concern for the individual taxed, to save his property or keep him from jail, it’s because they haven’t wisely considered how much they allow private feelings to interfere with the public good.

This, then, is my position for now. But one must always be careful, in cases like this, lest his actions be driven by stubbornness, or an undue concern for public opinion. He should see that he acts only according to himself and the moment.

Sometimes I think, These people mean well; they’re just ignorant; they would do better if they knew how—why make them treat you the way they’d rather not? But then I think, this is not a reason for me to act as they do, or allow others to suffer greater pain in other ways. Again, I sometimes ask myself: When millions of people, without anger or ill-will, without any personal feeling, demand of you only a few shillings, with no hope of changing their minds, and you can’t appeal to any other millions for support, why subject yourself to this overwhelming brute force? You don’t resist cold or hunger, the wind and the waves, so stubbornly; you submit quietly to a thousand such necessities. You do not put your head into the fire. But as I realize that this is not entirely a brute force but also a human one, and that I have a relationship to these millions as to so many men—not just to mere things—I see that some appeal is possible: first and instantly, from them to their Maker, and second, from them to themselves. If I put my head in the fire, there is no appeal to fire or the Maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I could convince myself that I have any right to be content with people as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according to some requirements and hopes for what they and I should be, then, like a good Muslim and fatalist, I would try to accept things as they are and say it is the will of God. And above all, the difference between resisting this and resisting merely brute or natural force is that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to change the nature of rocks, trees, or beasts.

I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, make fine distinctions, or claim superiority to my neighbors. Rather, I even look for an excuse to comply with the laws of the land. I am all too ready to comply. Indeed, I suspect myself on this point; and each year, as the tax–collector comes around, I find myself tempted to examine the acts and policies of the general and state governments, and the spirit of the people, seeking a reason to conform.

“We must affect our country as our parents,  
And if at any time we alienate  
Our love of industry from doing it honor,  
We must respect effects and teach the soul  
Matter of conscience and religion,  
And not desire of rule or benefit.”

I believe the State will soon be able to take over all this work from me, and then I will be no better a patriot than my fellow citizens. Viewed from a lower perspective, the Constitution, with all its faults, is quite good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this State and this American government are, in many ways, admirable and rare things to be thankful for, as many have described them. Seen from a higher, and then the highest point of view, who can say what they are, or even if they are worth looking at or thinking about at all?

Still, the government does not occupy much of my thoughts, and I intend to give it as little thought as possible. For only a few moments in this world do I truly live under a government. If a person is free in thought, free in fancy, and free in imagination, that which *is not* will never long seem *to be* to him; neither unwise rulers nor reformers can seriously disturb him.

I know that most people think differently from me; but even those who devote their lives, professionally, to studying these or related topics satisfy me no more than anyone else. Statesmen and legislators, standing entirely within the institution, never see it completely or clearly. They speak of moving society, but have no foundation outside of it. They may have a certain amount of experience and discernment, and no doubt have invented clever and even useful systems, for which we genuinely thank them; but all their cleverness and usefulness fall within rather narrow bounds. They tend to forget that the world is not ruled by policy and expediency alone. Webster never goes beyond government, and so he cannot speak with true authority about it. His words are wise for those legislators who consider no significant reforms to the government as it stands; but for true thinkers and those seeking to legislate for all time, he never seriously addresses the main issue. I am aware of people whose calm and wise reflections on this subject would quickly show the limits of his mind’s breadth and hospitality. Nevertheless, compared to the shallow declarations of most reformers, and the even more superficial wisdom and eloquence of politicians in general, his words are almost alone in being sensible and valuable, and we thank Heaven for him. By comparison, he is always strong, original, and particularly practical. Still, his main trait is not wisdom, but prudence. The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or consistent expediency. Truth is always in harmony with itself, and is not mainly concerned with showing the justice that might coexist with wrongdoing. He rightly deserves to be called, as he has been, the Defender of the Constitution. He really only delivers defensive blows. He is not a leader, but a follower. His leaders are the men of ’87. “I have never made an effort,” he says, “and never propose to make an effort; I have never encouraged an effort, and never mean to encourage an effort, to disturb the arrangement as originally made, by which the various States came into the Union.” Still thinking of the Constitution’s approval of slavery, he says, “Because it was part of the original compact,—let it stand.” Despite his sharpness and talent, he cannot separate a fact from its merely political context and see it as something to be dealt with by pure intellect—consider, for example, what a man in America today ought to do about slavery—but instead, he risks, or is forced, to give some desperate answer like the following, though he claims to speak objectively and as a private citizen—from which what new and peculiar code of social responsibilities could be drawn?—“The manner,” he says, “in which the governments of those States where slavery exists are to regulate it, is for their own consideration, under the responsibility to their constituents, to the general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God. Associations formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or any other cause, have nothing whatever to do with it. They have never received any encouragement from me and they never will.”

Those who know of no purer sources of truth, who have not traced its stream to a higher place, stand by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink there with reverence and humanity; but those who see where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins again, and keep journeying toward its source.

No one with a true genius for legislation has appeared in America. Such people are rare in world history. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent speakers by the thousands; but the speaker fit to finally address the much-debated issues of the day has yet to rise. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for the truth it may deliver, or for any heroism it inspires. Our lawmakers still have not learned to weigh the comparative value of free trade and freedom, of union and integrity, for a nation. They show no special genius or aptitude even for relatively simple matters of taxation and finance, commerce, manufacturing, and agriculture. If we depended solely on the clever words of Congress for guidance—uncorrected by timely public experience and forceful complaints—America would not keep her place among the nations for long. For eighteen hundred years, although perhaps I do not have the right to say it, the New Testament has existed; yet where is the lawmaker wise and practical enough to use the light it sheds on the science of legislation?

The authority of government, even the kind I am willing to submit to—for I will happily obey those who know and can do better than I, and even in many cases those who neither know nor can do so well—is still not pure; to be perfectly just, it must have the support and consent of those it governs. It cannot have any rightful power over my person and property except what I grant it. The move from absolute monarchy to limited monarchy, and from limited monarchy to democracy, is a step towards a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the foundation of the empire. Is democracy, as we know it, the final and best form of government? Is it not possible to go even further toward recognizing and organizing the rights of individuals? There will never be a truly free and enlightened State until the State comes to see the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own authority comes, and treats him accordingly. I like to imagine a State that finally could afford to be just to every person, and treat the individual as a neighbor; a State that would not consider it inconsistent with its own peace if a few citizens chose to distance themselves from it, neither interfering with nor being embraced by it, but still fulfilling all the duties of neighbors and fellow human beings. A State that allowed such fruits and let them fall away as they matured would lay the foundation for a greater and more glorious State, which I have imagined, but have yet to see anywhere.