Kitabı oku: «WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE», sayfa 2

though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again

in the sun.

For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide

circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of

my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my

labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own

reward.

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain

storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then

of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and

ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had

testified to their utility.

I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful

herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an

eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not

always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field

to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red

huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle tree, the red pine and the

black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have

withered else in dry seasons.

In short, I went on thus for a long time, I may say it without

boasting, faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more

evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of

town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance.

My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed,

never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled.

However, I have not set my heart on that.

Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of

a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. “Do you wish to buy any

baskets?” he asked. “No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “What!”

exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, “do you mean to starve

us?” Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off,—that the

lawyer had only to weave arguments, and by some magic, wealth and

standing followed, he had said to himself; I will go into business; I

will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he

had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be

the white man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it was

necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at

least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it

would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a

delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy

them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to

weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to

buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling

them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one

kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the

others?

Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in

the court house, or any curacy or living any where else, but I must

shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the

woods, where I was better known. I determined to go into business at

once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slender

means as I had already got. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not

to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private

business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing

which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and

business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish.

I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are

indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire,

then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will

be fixture enough. You will export such articles as the country

affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little

granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good ventures. To

oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and

captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the

accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter

sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon

many parts of the coast almost at the same time;—often the richest

freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;—to be your own

telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing

vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities,

for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep

yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and

peace every where, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and

civilization,—taking advantage of the results of all exploring

expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in

navigation;—charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights

and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables

to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often

splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier,—there is

the untold fate of La Perouse;—universal science to be kept pace with,

studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great

adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phœnicians down to our

day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know

how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a man,—such

problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging

of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge.

I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not

solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers

advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good

port and a good foundation. No Neva marshes to be filled; though you

must every where build on piles of your own driving. It is said that a

flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the Neva, would sweep St.

Petersburg from the face of the earth.

As this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it

may not be easy to conjecture where those means, that will still be

indispensable to every such undertaking, were to be obtained. As for

Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question,

perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the

opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Let him who

has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to

retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover

nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work

may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens

who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to

their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits.

They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on.

Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving

the impress of the wearer’s character, until we hesitate to lay them

aside, without such delay and medical appliances and some such

solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my

estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there

is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean

and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the

rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I

sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this;—who could wear a

patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they

believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should

do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg

than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a

gentleman’s legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens

to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he

considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We

know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in

your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest

salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat

and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a

little more weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard of a

dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master’s premises

with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an

interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if

they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell

surely of any company of civilized men, which belonged to the most

respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round

the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia,

she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling

dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she “was now in a

civilized country, where —— — people are judged of by their clothes.”

Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of

wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for

the possessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect,

numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary

sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which

you may call endless; a woman’s dress, at least, is never done.

A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a

new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in

the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero

longer than they have served his valet,—if a hero ever has a

valet,—bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only

they who go to soirées and legislative halls must have new coats, coats

to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and

trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do;

will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes,—his old coat, actually

worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a

deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be

bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do

with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,

and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how

can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before

you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to _do

with_, but something to _do_, or rather something to _be_. Perhaps we

should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until

we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we

feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like

keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the

fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary

ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the

caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for

clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall

be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at

last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.

We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by

addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are

our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may

be stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker

garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but

our shirts are our liber or true bark, which cannot be removed without

girdling and so destroying the man. I believe that all races at some

seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a

man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark,

and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if

an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the

gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most

purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be

obtained at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be

bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, thick

pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a

pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for

sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal

cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of _his own

earning_, there will not be found wise men to do him reverence?

When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me

gravely, “They do not make them so now,” not emphasizing the “They” at

all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I

find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot

believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this

oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing

to myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it,

that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity _They_ are related

to _me_, and what authority they may have in an affair which affects me

so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal

mystery, and without any more emphasis of the “they,”—“It is true, they

did not make them so recently, but they do now.” Of what use this

measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the

breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on? We

worship not the Graces, nor the Parcæ, but Fashion. She spins and

weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a

traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I

sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in

this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a

powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that

they would not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would be

some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg

deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these

things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not

forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.

On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in

this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. At present men make

shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on

what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of

space or time, laugh at each other’s masquerade. Every generation

laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are

amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, as

much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands.

All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious

eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it, which restrain

laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be

taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that

mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannon ball rags are as becoming

as purple.

The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps

how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may

discover the particular figure which this generation requires today.

The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of

two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a

particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the

shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season

the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is

not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely

because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.

I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men

may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day

more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as

far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that

mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that

corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they

aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better

aim at something high.

As for a Shelter

, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life,

though there are instances of men having done without it for long

periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing says that “the

Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his

head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow—in a

degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in

any woollen clothing.” He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, “They

are not hardier than other people.” But, probably, man did not live

long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in

a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally

signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family;

though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates

where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy

season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is

unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost

solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the

symbol of a day’s march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark

of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man was not

made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his

world, and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and

out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm

weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing

of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he

had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam

and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes.

Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical

warmth, then the warmth of the affections.

We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some

enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every

child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay out

doors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having

an instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with which when

young he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a cave? It was

the natural yearning of that portion of our most primitive ancestor

which still survived in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of

palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass

and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we

know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic

in more senses than we think. From the hearth to the field is a great

distance. It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days

and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies,

if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell

there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their

innocence in dovecots.

However, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it behooves him

to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself

in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a

prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a

shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this

town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a

foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it

deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living

honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question

which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am

become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six

feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at

night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might

get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it,

to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and

hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be

free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable

alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you

got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for

rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and

more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as

this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being

treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable

house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was

once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished

ready to their hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians

subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, “The best

of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of

trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up,

and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they

are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of

a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not

so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet

long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams,

and found them as warm as the best English houses.” He adds, that they

were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered

mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had

advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat

suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge

was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and

taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or

its apartment in one.

In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best,

and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I

speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have

their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams,

in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a

shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially

prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small

fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside

garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy

a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as

they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring

compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his

shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his

commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long

run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this

tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared

with the savage’s. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred

dollars, these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit of

the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and

paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper

pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how

happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a

_poor_ civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a

savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the

condition of man,—and I think that it is, though only the wise improve

their advantages,—it must be shown that it has produced better

dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is

the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged

for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this

neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this

sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer’s life, even if

he is not encumbered with a family;—estimating the pecuniary value of

every man’s labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others

receive less;—so that he must have spent more than half his life

commonly before _his_ wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a

rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage

have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?

It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding

this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far

as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral

expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself.

Nevertheless this points to an important distinction between the

civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they have designs on us

for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an

_institution_, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent

absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I wish

to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and

to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage

without suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean ye by saying that

the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour

grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?

“As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to

use this proverb in Israel.”

“Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul

of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.”

When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least

as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they

have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become

the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have inherited with

encumbrances, or else bought with hired money,—and we may regard one

third of that toil as the cost of their houses,—but commonly they have

not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh

the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great

encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well

acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am

surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town

who own their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of

these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man

who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that

every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in

Concord. What has been said of the merchants, that a very large

majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally

true of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them

says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine

pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements,

because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that

breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and

suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in

saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than

they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards

from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but

the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex

Cattle Show goes off here with _éclat_ annually, as if all the joints

of the agricultural machine were suent.