Loe raamatut: «WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE», lehekülg 3

The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a

formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his

shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skill he

has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and independence,

and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. This is the

reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect

to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As

Chapman sings,—

“The false society of men—

—for earthly greatness

All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.”

And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the

poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand

it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which

Minerva made, that she “had not made it movable, by which means a bad

neighborhood might be avoided;” and it may still be urged, for our

houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather

than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own

scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who,

for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the

outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to

accomplish it, and only death will set them free.

Granted that the _majority_ are able at last either to own or hire the

modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has been

improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to

inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create

noblemen and kings. And _if the civilized man’s pursuits are no

worthier than the savage’s, if he is employed the greater part of his

life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he

have a better dwelling than the former?_

But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found, that just

in proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above

the savage, others have been degraded below him. The luxury of one

class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side

is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and “silent poor.” The

myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed

on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves. The mason

who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a

hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a

country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition

of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that

of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich.

To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties

which every where border our railroads, that last improvement in

civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in

sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without

any visible, often imaginable, wood pile, and the forms of both old and

young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from

cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties

is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor

the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Such too,

to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of

every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the

world. Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the

white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condition

of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea

Islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by contact

with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that people’s rulers

are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their condition only

proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need

refer now to the laborers in our Southern States who produce the staple

exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production of the

South. But to confine myself to those who are said to be in _moderate_

circumstances.

Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are

actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that

they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to

wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or,

gradually leaving off palmleaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain

of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown! It is

possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we

have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for.

Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes

to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely

teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man’s

providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas,

and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should

not our furniture be as simple as the Arab’s or the Indian’s? When I

think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as

messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in

my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of fashionable

furniture. Or what if I were to allow—would it not be a singular

allowance?—that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab’s,

in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At

present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good

housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not

leave her morning’s work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora

and the music of Memnon, what should be man’s _morning work_ in this

world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified

to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my

mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in

disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit

in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has

broken ground.

It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd

so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the best houses, so

called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a

Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their tender mercies he

would soon be completely emasculated. I think that in the railroad car

we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience,

and it threatens without attaining these to become no better than a

modern drawing room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sun-shades, and

a hundred other oriental things, which we are taking west with us,

invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the

Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names

of. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be

crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart

with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an

excursion train and breathe a _malaria_ all the way.

The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages

imply this advantage at least, that they left him still but a sojourner

in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated

his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and

was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing

the mountain tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is

become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a

housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled

down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely

as an improved method of _agri_-culture. We have built for this world a

family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art

are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this

condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state

comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. There is actually no

place in this village for a work of _fine_ art, if any had come down to

us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper

pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf

to receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how our

houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal

economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give

way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the

mantel-piece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and

honest though earthy foundation. I cannot but perceive that this so

called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not get on

in the enjoyment of the _fine_ arts which adorn it, my attention being

wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember that the greatest genuine

leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is that of certain

wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level

ground. Without factitious support, man is sure to come to earth again

beyond that distance. The first question which I am tempted to put to

the proprietor of such great impropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you

one of the ninety-seven who fail, or of the three who succeed? Answer

me these questions, and then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and

find them ornamental. The cart before the horse is neither beautiful

nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the

walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful

housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a

taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is

no house and no housekeeper.

Old Johnson, in his “Wonder-Working Providence,” speaking of the first

settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that

“they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some

hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky

fire against the earth, at the highest side.” They did not “provide

them houses,” says he, “till the earth, by the Lord’s blessing, brought

forth bread to feed them,” and the first year’s crop was so light that

“they were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season.” The

secretary of the Province of New Netherland, writing in Dutch, in 1650,

for the information of those who wished to take up land there, states

more particularly that “those in New Netherland, and especially in New

England, who have no means to build farmhouses at first according to

their wishes, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or

seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the

earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the

bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth;

floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling,

raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green

sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their

entire families for two, three, and four years, it being understood

that partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the

size of the family. The wealthy and principal men in New England, in

the beginning of the colonies, commenced their first dwelling houses in

this fashion for two reasons; firstly, in order not to waste time in

building, and not to want food the next season; secondly, in order not

to discourage poor laboring people whom they brought over in numbers

from Fatherland. In the course of three or four years, when the country

became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves handsome houses,

spending on them several thousands.”

In this course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at

least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants

first. But are the more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of

acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, I am deterred,

for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to _human_ culture,

and we are still forced to cut our _spiritual_ bread far thinner than

our forefathers did their wheaten. Not that all architectural ornament

is to be neglected even in the rudest periods; but let our houses first

be lined with beauty, where they come in contact with our lives, like

the tenement of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas! I

have been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined with.

Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a

cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to accept

the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention and

industry of mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this, boards and

shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained than

suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities, or

even well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speak understandingly on this

subject, for I have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically

and practically. With a little more wit we might use these materials so

as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our civilization

a blessing. The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

But to make haste to my own experiment.

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the

woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house,

and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their

youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but

perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men

to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he

released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I

returned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside

where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on

the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories

were springing up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though

there were some open spaces, and it was all dark colored and saturated

with water. There were some slight flurries of snow during the days

that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the

railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming

in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I

heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence

another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the

winter of man’s discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the

life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe

had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with

a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to

swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on

the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed

there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not

yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a

like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition;

but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing

them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.

I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with

portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun

to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in

the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose

groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit

of the fog.

So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs

and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or

scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself,—

Men say they know many things;

But lo! they have taken wings,—

The arts and sciences,

And a thousand appliances;

The wind that blows

Is all that any body knows.

I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two

sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the

rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much

stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned

by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. My days in

the woods were not very long ones; yet I usually carried my dinner of

bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at

noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my

bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were covered

with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend

than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them,

having become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the

wood was attracted by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly

over the chips which I had made.

By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made

the most of it, my house was framed and ready for the raising. I had

already bought the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked on

the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James Collins’ shanty was

considered an uncommonly fine one. When I called to see it he was not

at home. I walked about the outside, at first unobserved from within,

the window was so deep and high. It was of small dimensions, with a

peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being

raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. The roof was

the soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by the

sun. Door-sill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens

under the door board. Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it

from the inside. The hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark,

and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only

here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. She

lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and

also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to

step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own

words, they were “good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a

good window,”—of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed

out that way lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an

infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed

looking-glass, and a patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling,

all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for James had in the

meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents

to-night, he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to nobody

else meanwhile: I to take possession at six. It were well, he said, to

be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust

claims on the score of ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the

only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family on the road. One

large bundle held their all,—bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens,—all

but the cat, she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I

learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a

dead cat at last.

I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and

removed it to the pond side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on

the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun. One early

thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the woodland path. I was

informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an

Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still

tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his

pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day, and

look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation;

there being a dearth of work, as he said. He was there to represent

spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with

the removal of the gods of Troy.

I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a

woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and

blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square

by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any

winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun

having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. It was but

two hours’ work. I took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground,

for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable

temperature. Under the most splendid house in the city is still to be

found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after

the superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the

earth. The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a

burrow.

At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my

acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness

than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man was

ever more honored in the character of his raisers than I. They are

destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one

day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was

boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and

lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before

boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two

cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built the

chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for

warmth, doing my cooking in the mean while out of doors on the ground,

early in the morning: which mode I still think is in some respects more

convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed before my

bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them

to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those

days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the

least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or

tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the

same purpose as the Iliad.

It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I

did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a

cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never

raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than

our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a

man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own

nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own

hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and

honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as

birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like

cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds

have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical

notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the

carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the

mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so

simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to

the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a

man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer.

Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally

serve? No doubt another _may_ also think for me; but it is not

therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my

thinking for myself.

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard

of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural

ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if

it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of

view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism. A

sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the cornice, not at

the foundation. It was only how to put a core of truth within the

ornaments, that every sugar plum in fact might have an almond or

caraway seed in it,—though I hold that almonds are most wholesome

without the sugar,—and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might

build truly within and without, and let the ornaments take care of

themselves. What reasonable man ever supposed that ornaments were

something outward and in the skin merely,—that the tortoise got his

spotted shell, or the shellfish its mother-o’-pearl tints, by such a

contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man

has no more to do with the style of architecture of his house than a

tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to

try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy

will find it out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man

seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half

truth to the rude occupants who really knew it better than he. What of

architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within

outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is

the only builder,—out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness,

without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional

beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a

like unconscious beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings in this

country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log

huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the

inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their

surfaces merely, which makes them _picturesque;_ and equally

interesting will be the citizen’s suburban box, when his life shall be

as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little

straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great proportion

of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale

would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the

substantials. They can do without _architecture_ who have no olives nor

wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments

of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much

time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are

made the _belles-lettres_ and the _beaux-arts_ and their professors.

Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him

or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box. It would signify

somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, _he_ slanted them and daubed it;

but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with

constructing his own coffin,—the architecture of the grave, and

“carpenter” is but another name for “coffin-maker.” One man says, in

his despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at

your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of his last

and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of

leisure he must have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better

paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for

you. An enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! When

you have got my ornaments ready I will wear them.

Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house,

which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy

shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose edges I was obliged

to straighten with a plane.

I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by

fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large

window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick

fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price

for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which

was done by myself, was as follows; and I give the details because very