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
mans 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. Doorsill there was none,
but a perennial passage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C.
came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The 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 tonight, he to vacate at five tomorrow morning,
selling to nobody else meanwhile: I to take possession at six. It
were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain
indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of ground rent and
fuel. This he assured me was the 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 meanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in the
morning: which mode I still think is in some respects more
convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed before
my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat
under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that
way. In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but
little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my
holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact
answered the same purpose as the Iliad.
It would be worth the while to build still more 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 mans building his own house that there is in a birds
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 sugarplum, 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 shell-fish
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 citizens 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 be
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 few are able to tell exactly what their houses
cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various
materials which compose them:--
Boards .......................... $ 8.03+, mostly shanty boards.
Refuse shingles for roof sides ... 4.00
Laths ............................ 1.25
Two second-hand windows
with glass .................... 2.43
One thousand old brick ........... 4.00
Two casks of lime ................ 2.40 That was high.
Hair ............................. 0.31 More than I 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 ...................... $28.12+
These are all the materials, excepting the timber, stones, and
sand, which I claimed by squatters right. I have also a small
woodshed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after
building the house.
I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main
street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me
as much and will cost me no more than my present one.
I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can
obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent
which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is
becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for
myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the
truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy --
chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for
which I am as sorry as any man -- I will breathe freely and stretch
myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and
physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humility
become the devils attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word
for the truth. At Cambridge College the mere rent of a students
room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars
each year, though the corporation had the advantage of building
thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers
the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a
residence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we had
more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would be
needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired,
but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great
measure vanish. Those conveniences which the student requires at
Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great
a sacrifice of life as they would with proper management on both
sides. Those things for which the most money is demanded are never
the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is
an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable
education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of
his contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a
college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents,
and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to
its extreme -- a principle which should never be followed but with
circumspection -- to call in a contractor who makes this a subject
of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other operatives actually
to lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are said
to be fitting themselves for it; and for these oversights successive
generations have to pay. I think that it would be better than this,
for the students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to
lay the foundation themselves. The student who secures his coveted
leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor
necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure,
defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure
fruitful. "But," says one, "you do not mean that the students
should go to work with their hands instead of their heads?" I do
not mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might think a
good deal like that; I mean that they should not play life, or study
it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game,
but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths
better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of
living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as
mathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and
sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which
is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where
anything is professed and practised but the art of life; -- to
survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with
his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is
made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new
satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to
what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the
monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters
in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end
of a month -- the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore
which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary
for this -- or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy
at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers
penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his
fingers?... To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college
that I had studied navigation! -- why, if I had taken one turn down
the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor student
studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of
living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely
professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is
reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt
irretrievably.
As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements";
there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive
advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last
for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them.
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our
attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an
unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive
at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste
to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and
Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is
in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to
a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end
of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if
the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are
eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some
weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak
through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the
Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose
horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important
messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round eating
locusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a
peck of corn to mill.
One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love
to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see
the country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the
swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend,
Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty
miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a days wages. I
remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very
road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have
travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the
meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time
tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a
job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working
here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached
round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for
seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should
have to cut your acquaintance altogether.
Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and
with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is
long. To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind
is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have
an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint
stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in
next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the
depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is
blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few
are riding, but the rest are run over -- and it will be called, and
will be, "A melancholy accident." No doubt they can ride at last
who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long,
but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to
travel by that time. This spending of the best part of ones life
earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the
least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to
India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to
England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret
at once. "What!" exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all
the shanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have built
a good thing?" Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you
might have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that
you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.
Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve
dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my
unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and
sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with
potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven
acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories, and was sold the
preceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. One
farmer said that it was "good for nothing but to raise cheeping
squirrels on." I put no manure whatever on this land, not being the
owner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so much
again, and I did not quite hoe it all once. I got out several cords
of stumps in plowing, which supplied me with fuel for a long time,
and left small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishable
through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there.
The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house,
and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the remainder of my
fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the plowing,
though I held the plow myself. My farm outgoes for the first season
were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72+. The seed corn was
given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you plant
more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen
bushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. The yellow
corn and turnips were too late to come to anything. My whole income
from the farm was
$ 23.44
Deducting the outgoes ............ 14.72+
-------
There are left .................. $ 8.71+
beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was
made of the value of $4.50 -- the amount on hand much more than
balancing a little grass which I did not raise. All things
considered, that is, considering the importance of a mans soul and
of today, notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment,
nay, partly even because of its transient character, I believe that
that was doing better than any farmer in Concord did that year.
The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land
which I required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the
experience of both years, not being in the least awed by many
celebrated works on husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if
one would live simply and eat only the crop which he raised, and
raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient
quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would need to
cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to
spade up that than to use oxen to plow it, and to select a fresh
spot from time to time than to manure the old, and he could do all
his necessary farm work as it were with his left hand at odd hours
in the summer; and thus he would not be tied to an ox, or horse, or
cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to speak impartially on this
point, and as one not interested in the success or failure of the
present economical and social arrangements. I was more independent
than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or
farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very
crooked one, every moment. Beside being better off than they
already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I
should have been nearly as well off as before.
I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds
as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer.
Men and oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only,
the oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is
so much the larger. Man does some of his part of the exchange work
in his six weeks of haying, and it is no boys play. Certainly no
nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of
philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of
animals. True, there never was and is not likely soon to be a
nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there
should be. However, I should never have broken a horse or bull and
taken him to board for any work he might do for me, for fear I
should become a horseman or a herdsman merely; and if society seems
to be the gainer by so doing, are we certain that what is one mans
gain is not anothers loss, and that the stable-boy has equal cause
with his master to be satisfied? Granted that some public works
would not have been constructed without this aid, and let man share
the glory of such with the ox and horse; does it follow that he
could not have accomplished works yet more worthy of himself in that
case? When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or artistic, but
luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable
that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in other
words, become the slaves of the strongest. Man thus not only works
for the animal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he works for
the animal without him. Though we have many substantial houses of
brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by
the degree to which the barn overshadows the house. This town is
said to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses
hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in its public buildings; but
there are very few halls for free worship or free speech in this
county. It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by
their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to
commemorate themselves? How much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta
than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the luxury
of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the
bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor
is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling
extent. To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered? In Arcadia,
when I was there, I did not see any hammering stone. Nations are
possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of
themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if
equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One
piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high
as the moon. I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of
Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone wall
that bounds an honest mans field than a hundred-gated Thebes that
has wandered farther from the true end of life. The religion and
civilization which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid
temples; but what you might call Christianity does not. Most of the
stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself
alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them
so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough
to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby,
whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the
Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent
some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it. As for the
religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all
the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the
United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The mainspring
is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter. Mr.
Balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the back of his
Vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to
Dobson & Sons, stonecutters. When the thirty centuries begin to
look down on it, mankind begin to look up at it. As for your high
towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who
undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he
said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that
I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made. Many
are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to
know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in
those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling. But
to proceed with my statistics.
By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in
the village in the meanwhile, for I have as many trades as fingers,
I had earned $13.34. The expense of food for eight months, namely,
from July 4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates were made,
though I lived there more than two years -- not counting potatoes, a
little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor
considering the value of what was on hand at the last date -- was
Rice .................... $ 1.73 1/2
Molasses ................. 1.73 Cheapest form of the
saccharine.
Rye meal ................. 1.04 3/4
Indian meal .............. 0.99 3/4 Cheaper than rye.
Pork ..................... 0.22
All experiments which failed:
Flour .................... 0.88 Costs more than Indian meal,
both money and trouble.
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 eat $8.74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly
publish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers were
equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no
better in print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish
for my dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck
which ravaged my bean-field -- effect his transmigration, as a
Tartar would say -- and devour him, partly for experiments sake;
but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a
musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good
practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready
dressed by the village butcher.
Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates,
though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to
$ 8.40-3/4
Oil and some household utensils ........ 2.00
So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and
mending, which for the most part were done out of the house, and
their bills have not yet been received -- and these are all and more
than all the ways by which money necessarily goes out in this part
of the world -- were
House ................................. $ 28.12+
Farm one year ........................... 14.72+
Food eight months ....................... 8.74
Clothing, etc., eight months ............ 8.40-3/4
Oil, etc., eight months ................. 2.00
-----------
In all ............................ $ 61.99-3/4
I address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to
get. And to meet this I have for farm produce sold
$ 23.44
Earned by day-labor .................... 13.34
-------
In all ............................ $ 36.78,
which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of
$25.21 3/4 on the one side -- this being very nearly the means with
which I started, and the measure of expenses to be incurred -- and
on the other, beside the leisure and independence and health thus
secured, a comfortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy
it.
These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive
they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain
value also. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some
account. It appears from the above estimate, that my food alone
cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week. It was, for
nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal without yeast,
potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt; and my
drink, water. It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who
love so well the philosophy of India. To meet the objections of
some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out
occasionally, as I always had done, and I trust shall have
opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my
domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as I have stated,
a constant element, does not in the least affect a comparative
statement like this.
I learned from my two years experience that it would cost
incredibly little trouble to obtain ones necessary food, even in
this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals,
and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory
dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of
purslane (Portulaca oleracea) which I gathered in my cornfield,
boiled and salted. I give the Latin on account of the savoriness of
the trivial name. And pray what more can a reasonable man desire,
in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of
ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Even
the little variety which I used was a yielding to the demands of
appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to such a pass that
they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of
luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his
life because he took to drinking water only.
The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject rather
from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not
venture to put my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a
well-stocked larder.
Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine
hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or
the end of a stick of timber sawed off in building my house; but it
was wont to get smoked and to have a piny flavor, I tried flour
also; but have at last found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most
convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little
amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession,
tending and turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching
eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had
to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble fruits, which I
kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths. I made a
study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making,
consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive
days and first invention of the unleavened kind, when from the
wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and
refinement of this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies
through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is supposed,
taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations
thereafter, till I came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staff
of life. Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus
which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like
the vestal fire -- some precious bottleful, I suppose, first brought
over in the Mayflower, did the business for America, and its
influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows
over the land -- this seed I regularly and faithfully procured from
the village, till at length one morning I forgot the rules, and
scalded my yeast; by which accident I discovered that even this was
not indispensable -- for my discoveries were not by the synthetic
but analytic process -- and I have gladly omitted it since, though
most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread
without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy
decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential
ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the
land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness of
carrying a bottleful in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and
discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more
respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than any other
can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. Neither did I
put any sal-soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. It would
seem that I made it according to the recipe which Marcus Porcius
Cato gave about two centuries before Christ. "Panem depsticium sic
facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium
indito, aquae paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene
subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu." Which I take to mean,
-- "Make kneaded bread thus. Wash your hands and trough well. Put
the meal into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it
thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it
under a cover," that is, in a baking kettle. Not a word about
leaven. But I did not always use this staff of life. At one time,
owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than a
month.
Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs
in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and
fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and
independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold
in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly
used by any. For the most part the farmer gives to his cattle and
hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is at
least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. I saw
that I could easily raise my bushel or two of rye and Indian corn,
for the former will grow on the poorest land, and the latter does
not require the best, and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do
without rice and pork; and if I must have some concentrated sweet, I
found by experiment that I could make a very good molasses either of
pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out a few
maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these were growing
I could use various substitutes beside those which I have named.
"For," as the Forefathers sang,--
"we can make liquor to sweeten our lips
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips."
Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this
might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did
without it altogether, I should probably drink the less water. I do
not learn that the Indians ever troubled themselves to go after it.
Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was
concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get
clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a
farmers family -- thank Heaven there is so much virtue still in
man; for I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great
and memorable as that from the man to the farmer; -- and in a new
country, fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not
permitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same
price for which the land I cultivated was sold -- namely, eight
dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I considered that I
enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it.
There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me
such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food
alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once -- for the
root is faith -- I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on
board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand
much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to bear of
experiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for
a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth
for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded.
The human race is interested in these experiments, though a few old
women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in
mills, may be alarmed.
My furniture, part of which I made myself -- and the rest cost
me nothing of which I have not rendered an account -- consisted of a
bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in
diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a
frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three
plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a
japanned lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. That
is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best
in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture!
Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture
warehouse. What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see
his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the
light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty
boxes? That is Spauldings furniture. I could never tell from
inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man
or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed,
the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load
looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if
one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what
do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuvioe: at
last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave
this to be burned? It is the same as if all these traps were
buckled to a mans belt, and he could not move over the rough
country where our lines are cast without dragging them -- dragging
his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. The
muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. No wonder man has
lost his elasticity. How often he is at a dead set! "Sir, if I may
be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?" If you are a seer,
whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much
that he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his kitchen
furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will not burn, and
he will appear to be harnessed to it and making what headway he can.
I think that the man is at a dead set who has got through a
knot-hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannot
follow him. I cannot but feel compassion when I hear some trig,
compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of
his "furniture," as whether it is insured or not. "But what shall I
do with my furniture?" -- My gay butterfly is entangled in a
spiders web then. Even those who seem for a long while not to have
any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in
somebodys barn. I look upon England today as an old gentleman who
is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has
accumulated from long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to
burn; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. Throw away
the first three at least. It would surpass the powers of a well man
nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise
a sick one to lay down his bed and run. When I have met an
immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all --
looking like an enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his
neck -- I have pitied him, not because that was his all, but because
he had all that to carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will
take care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part.
But perchance it would be wisest never to put ones paw into it.
I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for
curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and
I am willing that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk
nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade
my carpet; and if he is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still
better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has
provided, than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping.
A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within
the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I
declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door.
It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacons
effects, for his life had not been ineffectual:--
"The evil that men do lives after them."
As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to
accumulate in his fathers day. Among the rest was a dried
tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garret and
other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a
bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or
increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view them,
bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and
dust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they
will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust.
The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be
profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the
semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of
the thing, whether they have the reality or not. Would it not be
well if we were to celebrate such a "busk," or "feast of first
fruits," as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the
Mucclasse Indians? "When a town celebrates the busk," says he,
"having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots,
pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all
their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and
cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town of their filth,
which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they
cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After
having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in
the town is extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the
gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general
amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town."
"On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood
together, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every
habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame."
They then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance and sing
for three days, "and the four following days they receive visits and
rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns who have in like
manner purified and prepared themselves."
The Mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of
every fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the world
to come to an end.
I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the
dictionary defines it, "outward and visible sign of an inward and
spiritual grace," than this, and I have no doubt that they were
originally inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, though they
have no Biblical record of the revelation.
For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the
labor of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a
year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my
winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for
study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my
expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my
income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and
believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did
not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a
livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade but I found that
it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I
should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid
that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business.
When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a
living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends
being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and
seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its
small profits might suffice -- for my greatest skill has been to
want but little -- so little capital it required, so little
distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my
acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I
contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills
all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter
carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus. I
also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens
to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the
city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that trade curses
everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven,
the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.
As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my
freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish
to spend my time in earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or
delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just
yet. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire
these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, I
relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are "industrious," and appear
to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out
of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say. Those
who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy,
I might advise to work twice as hard as they do -- work till they
pay for themselves, and get their free papers. For myself I found
that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of
any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year
to support one. The laborers day ends with the going down of the
sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit,
independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from
month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the
other.
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to
maintain ones self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime,
if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler
nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not
necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his
brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.
One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres,
told me that he thought he should live as I did, if he had the
means. I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any
account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have
found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many
different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each
one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his
fathers or his mothers or his neighbors instead. The youth may
build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that
which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical
point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave
keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for
all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable
period, but we would preserve the true course.
Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer still
for a thousand, as a large house is not proportionally more
expensive than a small one, since one roof may cover, one cellar
underlie, and one wall separate several apartments. But for my
part, I preferred the solitary dwelling. Moreover, it will commonly
be cheaper to build the whole yourself than to convince another of
the advantage of the common wall; and when you have done this, the
common partition, to be much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that
other may prove a bad neighbor, and also not keep his side in
repair. The only co-operation which is commonly possible is
exceedingly partial and superficial; and what little true
co-operation there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony
inaudible to men. If a man has faith, he will co-operate with equal
faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like
the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To
co-operate in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get
our living together. I heard it proposed lately that two young men
should travel together over the world, the one without money,
earning his means as he went, before the mast and behind the plow,
the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to
see that they could not long be companions or co-operate, since one
would not operate at all. They would part at the first interesting
crisis in their adventures. Above all, as I have implied, the man
who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must
wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they
get off.
But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen
say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in
philanthropic enterprises. I have made some sacrifices to a sense
of duty, and among others have sacrificed this pleasure also. There
are those who have used all their arts to persuade me to undertake
the support of some poor family in the town; and if I had nothing to
do -- for the devil finds employment for the idle -- I might try my
hand at some such pastime as that. However, when I have thought to
indulge myself in this respect, and lay their Heaven under an
obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects as
comfortably as I maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as
to make them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly
preferred to remain poor. While my townsmen and women are devoted
in so many ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at
least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits. You must
have a genius for charity as well as for anything else. As for
Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full.
Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am
satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I
should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular
calling to do the good which society demands of me, to save the
universe from annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely
greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I
would not stand between any man and his genius; and to him who does
this work, which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life,
I would say, Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it
is most likely they will.
I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no doubt
many of my readers would make a similar defence. At doing something
-- I will not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good -- I
do not hesitate to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire;
but what that is, it is for my employer to find out. What good I
do, in the common sense of that word, must be aside from my main
path, and for the most part wholly unintended. Men say,
practically, Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming
mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go
about doing good. If I were to preach at all in this strain, I
should say rather, Set about being good. As if the sun should stop
when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a star
of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a Robin Goodfellow,
peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting
meats, and making darkness visible, instead of steadily increasing
his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that
no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in the meanwhile
too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it good, or
rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going about
him getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly birth
by his beneficence, had the suns chariot but one day, and drove out
of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of houses in the lower
streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, and dried
up every spring, and made the great desert of Sahara, till at length
Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the
sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a year.
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness
tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a
certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious
design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry
and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which
fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are
suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me
-- some of its virus mingled with my blood. No -- in this case I
would rather suffer evil the natural way. A man is not a good man
to me because he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm me if
I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever
fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as
much. Philanthropy is not love for ones fellow-man in the broadest
sense. Howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in
his way, and has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a
hundred Howards to us, if their philanthropy do not help us in our
best estate, when we are most worthy to be helped? I never heard of
a philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed to do any
good to me, or the like of me.
The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned
at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors.
Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they
were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer;
and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less
persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did not
care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new
fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did.
Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it
be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money,
spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We
make curious mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold
and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his
taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he
will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy
Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged
clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more
fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped
into the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw him strip off
three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to
the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and
that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered
him, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he
needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be a
greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole
slop-shop on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of
evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who
bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing
the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives
in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the
proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sundays liberty for the
rest. Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in
their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed
themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of your income
in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with
it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is
this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found,
or to the remissness of the officers of justice?
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently
appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our
selfishness which overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day
here in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he
said, he was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind uncles and
aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers
and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of
learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific,
literary, and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell,
Milton, Newton, and others, speak next of her Christian heroes,
whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a
place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. They
were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood
and cant of this. The last were not Englands best men and women;
only, perhaps, her best philanthropists.
I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to
philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives
and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a mans
uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and
leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea
for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by
quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance
be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our
intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act,
but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he
is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins.
The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance
of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy.
We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and
ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread
by contagion. From what southern plains comes up the voice of
wailing? Under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would
send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would
redeem? If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his
functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even -- for that is the
seat of sympathy -- he forthwith sets about reforming -- the world.
Being a microcosm himself, he discovers -- and it is a true
discovery, and he is the man to make it -- that the world has been
eating green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a
great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of that the
children of men will nibble before it is ripe; and straightway his
drastic philanthropy seeks out the Esquimau and the Patagonian, and
embraces the populous Indian and Chinese villages; and thus, by a
few years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the meanwhile
using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his
dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both of its
cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and life loses its
crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live. I never
dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never
knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy
with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of
God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come
to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his
generous companions without apology. My excuse for not lecturing
against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it, that is a
penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are
things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against. If you
should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let
your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth
knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings. Take your
time, and set about some free labor.
Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the
saints. Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and
enduring Him forever. One would say that even the prophets and
redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of
man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible
satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God.
All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn
it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does
me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.
If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly Indian, botanic,
magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as simple and well as
Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows,
and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an
overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of
the world.
I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of
Shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying: Of the many celebrated
trees which the Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they
call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no
fruit; what mystery is there in this? He replied, Each has its
appropriate produce, and appointed season, during the continuance of
which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence dry and
withered; to neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being
always flourishing; and of this nature are the azads, or religious
independents. -- Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for
the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad after
the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal
as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an
azad, or free man, like the cypress."
COMPLEMENTAL VERSES
The Pretensions of Poverty
Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,
To claim a station in the firmament
Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,
Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue
In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,
With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,
Tearing those humane passions from the mind,
Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,
Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,
And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.
We not require the dull society
Of your necessitated temperance,
Or that unnatural stupidity
That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forcd
Falsely exalted passive fortitude
Above the active. This low abject brood,
That fix their seats in mediocrity,
Become your servile minds; but we advance
Such virtues only as admit excess,
Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,
All-seeing prudence, magnanimity
That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue
For which antiquity hath left no name,
But patterns only, such as Hercules,
Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loathd cell;
And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,
Study to know but what those worthies were.
T. CAREW