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02 - Walden - Henry David Thoreau · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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Chapter one, LibriVox, Part two. Most of the luxuries in many of
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these so called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances
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to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest
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have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the poor. The ancient
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philosophers Chinese, Hindu, Persian, and Greek were a class than which none
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has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward We know not
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much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as
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we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of
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their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life.
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But from the vantage round of what we should call voluntary poverty of a life
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of luxury, the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture or commerce, or
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literature or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.
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Yet it is admirable to profess, because it was once admirable to live.
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To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtile thoughts, nor even to
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found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its
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dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It
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is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically but practically.
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The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier like success,
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not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity,
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practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a
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noble race of men. But why do men degenerate? Ever? What makes
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families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys
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nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives?
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The philosopher is in advance of his age. Even in the outward form
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of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed like
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his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital
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heat by better methods than other men? When a man is warmed by the
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several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not
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more warmth of the same kind as more and richer food, larger and more
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splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant and hotter
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fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary
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to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities, and that
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is to adventure on life. Now his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.
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The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has
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sent its radical downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with
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confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that
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he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above. For the nobler
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plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light
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far from the ground, and are not treated like the humblower esculence, which
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though they may be biennials, and cultivated only till they have perfected their root,
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and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would
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not know them in their flowering season. I do not mean to prescribe rules
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to strong and valiant natures, who mind their own affairs, whether in heaven
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or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest,
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without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live, if indeed there
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are any such as has been dreamed. Nor to those who find their encouragement
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and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with the
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fondness and enthusiasm of lovers, And to some extent I reckon myself in this
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number. I do not speak to those who are well employed in whatever circumstances,
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and they know whether they are well employed or not, but mainly to
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the mass of men who are discontented and idly complaining of the hardness of their
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lot or of the times when they might improve them. There are some who
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complain most energetically and inconsolably of any because they are, as they say,
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doing their duty. I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most
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terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross but know not how to
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use it or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden
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or silver fetters. If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to
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spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers
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who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history. It would certainly astonish those who
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know nothing about it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises which
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I have cherished in any weather, at any hour of the day or night.
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I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it
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on my stick too, to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the
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past and future, which is precisely the present moment. To tow that line,
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you will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade
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than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its
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very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and
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never paint no admittance on my gait. I long ago lost hound, a
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bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail.
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Many are the travelers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks, and
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what cause they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard
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the hound and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear
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behind a cloud, And they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they
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had lost them themselves. To anticipate not the sunrise and the dawn merely,
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but if possible nature herself. How many mornings summer and winter before yet any
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neighbor was stirring about his business. Have I been about mine? No doubt.
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Many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting
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for Boston and the twilight, or wood choppers going to their work. It
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is true I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubt not
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it was of the last importance only to be present at it. So many
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autumn days and winter days spent outside the town trying to hear what was in
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the wind, to hear and carry it express, I well nigh sunk all
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my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain running in
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the face of it. If it had concerned either of the political parties depend
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upon it, it would have appeared in the gazette with the earliest intelligence.
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At other times, watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree to telegraph
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any new arrival, or waiting at evening on the hilltops for the sky to
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fall that I might catch something, though I never caught much, and that
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manner wise would dissolve again in the sun. For a long time I was
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reporter to a journal of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet
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seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions. And as is too common
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with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in
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this case, my pains were their own reward. For many years I was
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self appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully
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surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across lot
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roots, keeping them open and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons where the
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public heel had testified to their utility. I have looked after the wild stock
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of the town, which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by
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leaping fences. And I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners
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of the farm. Though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked
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in a particular field to day, that was none of my business. I
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have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry, and the nettle tree,
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the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet,
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which might have withered else in dry seasons. In short, I went
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on thus for a long time, I may say it without boasting, faithfully
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minding my business till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not,
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after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my
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place a cynosure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear
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to have kept faithfully, I have indeed never got audited, still less accepted,
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still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart
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on that. Not long since a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the
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house of a well known lawyer in my neighborhood. Do you wish to buy
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any baskets? He asked? No, we do not want any, was
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the reply. What exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, do
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you mean to starve us? Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off
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that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and by some magic wealth and
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standing followed, he had said to himself, I will go into business.
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I will weave baskets. It is a thing which I can do, thinking
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that when he had made the baskets, he would have done his part,
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and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not
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discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the others while to
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buy them, or it least make him think that it was so, or
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to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I
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too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had
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not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet, not the
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less in my case did I think it worth my while to weave them.
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And instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets,
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I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life
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which men praise and regard as successful, is but one kind. Why should
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we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others. Finding that my
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fellow citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the court house,
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or any curacy, or living anywhere else, but I must shift for myself,
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I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I
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was better known. I determined to go into business at once, and not
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wait to acquire the usual capital using such slender means as I had already got.
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My purpose in going to walden Pond was not to live cheaply, nor
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to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles
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to be hindered from accomplishing, which, for want of a little common sense,
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a little enterprise and business talent, appeared, not so sad as foolish.
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I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits. They are indispensable to
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every man. If your trade is with the celestial Empire, then some small
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counting house on the coast, in some Salem Hume harbor will be fixture enough.
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You will export such articles as the country affords purely native products, much
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ice and pine, timber, and a little granite, always in native bottoms.
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These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person,
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To be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter, to
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buy and sell and keep the accounts. To read every letter received, and
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write or read every letter sent. To superintend the discharge of imports night and
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day, to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time.
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Often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore. To be
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your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels, bound
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coastwise, to keep up a steady dispatch of commodities for the supply of such
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a distant and exorbitant market. To keep yourself informed of the state of the
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markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade
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and civilization, taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions using new passages,
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and all improvements in navigation charts to be studied, the position of reefs
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and new lights and boys to be ascertained, and ever and ever the logarithmic
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tables to be corrected for by the error of some calculator. The vessel often
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splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly peer. There is the
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untold fate of La Prouse. Universal science to be kept pace with studying the
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lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno
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and the Phoenicians down to our day. In fine account of stock, to
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be taken from time to time to know how you stand. It is a
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labor to task the faculties of a man, such problems of profit and loss
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of interest, of tear and tret engaging of all kinds in it as demand
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a universal knowledge. I have thought that walden Pond would be a good place
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for business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade.
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It offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge. It is
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a good port and a good foundation. No never marshes to be filled,
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though you must everywhere build on piles of your own driving. It is said
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that a flood tide with a westerly wind and ice in the Neva would sweep
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Saint Petersburg from the face of the earth. As this business was to be
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entered into without the usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where
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those means that will still be indispensable to every such undertaking were to be obtained.
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As for clothing, come at once to the practical part of the question.
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Perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for
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the opinions of men in procuring it, than by a true utility. Let
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him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is first to
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retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to
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cover nakedness. And he may judge how much of any necessary or important work
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may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a
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suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties,
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cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better
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than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments become
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more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the imp press of the wearer's character, until
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we hesitate to lay them aside without such delay, and medical appliances, and
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some such solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in
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my estimation, for having a patch in his clothes. Yet I am sure
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that there is greater anxiety commonly to have fashionable, or at least clean and
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unpatched clothes than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is
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not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try my
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acquaintances by such tests as this, Who could wear a patch or two extra
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seams only over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects
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for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier
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for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantuluon.
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Often, if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be
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mended. But if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons,
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there is no help for it. For he considers not what is truly respectable,
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but what is respected. We know but few men, a great many
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coats and breeches, dress a scarecrow in your latest shift, You standing shiftless
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by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow passing a cornfield the other day
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close by a hat and coat on a steak, I recognized the owner of
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the farm. He was only a little more weather beaten than when I saw
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him last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who
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approached his master's premises with clothes on, but as easily quieted by a naked
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thief. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank
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if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case
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tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged to the most respected class.
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When Madame Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels around the world from east to
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west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia. She says that she
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felt the necessity of wearing other than a traveling dress when she went to meet
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the authorities, for she was now in a civilized country where people are judged
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by their clothes. Even in our democratic New England towns. The accidental possession
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of wealth and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone obtain for the possessor almost
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universal respect. But they yield such respect numerous as they are are so far
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heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Besides clothes introduced,
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sewing a kind of work which you may call endless. A woman's dress,
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at least is never done. A man who has at length found something
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to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in for
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him, the old will do that has lain dusty in the garret for an
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indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his
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valet. If a hero ever has a valet, bare feet are older than
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shoes, and he can make them do Only those who go to soirees and
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legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man
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changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes
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are fit to worship God in, they will do, will they not?
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Whoever saw his old clothes, his old coat actually worn out, resolved into
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its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow
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it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer
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still, or shall we say richer who could do with less? I say,
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beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new
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wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the
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new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise, before you
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try it in your old clothes. All men want not something to do with,
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but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should
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never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty, the old, until
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we have so con so enterprised or sailed in some way that we feel like
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new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping
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new wine in old bottles. Our molting season, like that of the fowls,
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must be a crisis in our lives, the loon retires to solitary ponds
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to spend it. Thus, also the snake casts its slough, and the
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caterpillar its wormy coat by an internal industry and expansion. For clothes are but
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our outmost cutical and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false
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colors and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as
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that of mankind. We don garment after garment, as if we grew like
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exogenous plants. By addition, without our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes
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are our epidermis, our false skin, which partakes not of our life,
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and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury. Our thicker garments,
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constantly worn are our cellular, integument or cortex. But our shirts are
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our liber or true bark, which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying
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the man. I believe that all races, at some seasons wear something equivalent
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to the shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that
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he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live
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in all respects so compactly and preparedly that if an enemy take the town,
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he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty handed without
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anxiety. While one thick garment is for most purposes as good as three thin
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ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit customers,
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while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars which will last as many
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years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a
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half, a pair a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and
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a winter cap for sixty two and a half cents, or a better be
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made at home at a nominal cost. Where is he so poor that,
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clad in such a suit of his own earning, there will not be found
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wise men to do him reverence. When I ask for a garment of a
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particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, they do not make them so
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now, not emphasizing the they at all, as if she quoted an authority
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as impersonal as the fates. And I find it difficult to get what I
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want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say. That
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I am so rash when I hear this oracular sentence, I am, for
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a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately, that I
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may come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what
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degree of consanguinity they are related to me, and what authority they may have
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in an affair which affects me. So nearly and finally, I am inclined
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to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the they
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quote. It is true they did not make them so recently, but they
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do now end quote. Of what use this measuring of me? If she
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does not measure my character but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it
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were a peg to bang the coat on. We worship not the graces nor
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the parsee, but fashion. She spins, weaves, and cuts with full
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authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all
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the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything quite
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simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would
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have to be passed through a powerful press, first to squeeze their old notions
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out of them, so that they would not so soon get upon their legs
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again. And then there would be someone in the company with a maggot in
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his head, hatched from an egg deposited there. Nobody knows when, for
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not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor.
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Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us
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by a mummy. On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained
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that dressing has in this or any country, risen to the dignity of an
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art. Present men make shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked
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sailors. They put on what they can find on the beach, and at
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a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other's masquerade.
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Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
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We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry the Eighth or Queen Elizabeth,
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as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal
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Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only
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the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it, which restrain
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laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a
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fit of the colic, and his trappings will have to serve that mood too.
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When the soldier is hit by a cannon ball, rags are as becoming
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as purple. The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns
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keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes, that they may discover the particular
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figure which this generation requires. To day, the manufacturers have learned that this
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taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads
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more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily,
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the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse
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of a season, the latter becomes the more fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is
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not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because
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the printing is skin deep and unalterable. I cannot believe that our factory system
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is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the
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operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English, and it cannot
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be wondered at since, as far as I have heard, or observed.
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The principal object is not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but
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unquestionably that corporations may be enriched in the long run. Men hit only what
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they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better
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aim at something high. As for a shelter, I will not deny that
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this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances of men having
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done without it for long periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Lang says
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that quote the laplander, in his skin dress and in a skin bag which
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he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the
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snow, in a degree of cold, which would exc distinguished the life of
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one exposed to it in any woolen clothing. He had seen them asleep.
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Thus, yet he adds quote, they are not hardier than other people.
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End. But probably the man did not live long on the earth without discovering
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the convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts which phrase may
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have originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family, though
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these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house is associated
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in our thoughts, with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds
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of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary in our climate.
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In the summer it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the
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Indian gazettes, a wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, and a
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row of them cut her painted on the bark of a tree signified that so
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many times they had camped. Man was not made so large, limbed and
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robust, but that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a
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space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors,
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But though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather by daylight,
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the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun,
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would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste
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to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according
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to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home,
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a place of warmth or comfort, first of warmth, then the warmth
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of the affections. We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of
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the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for
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shelter. Every child begins the world again to some extent, and loves to
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stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. It plays house as well as
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horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with
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which, when young he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a
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cave. It was the natural yearning of that portion, any portion of our
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most primitive ancestor, which still survived in us. From the cave we have
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advanced to roofs of palm, leaves of bark, and boughs of linen woven
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and stretched of grass and straw, of boards, and shingles of stones and
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tiles. At last we know not what it is to live in the open
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air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think. From
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the hearth, the field is a great distance. It would be well,
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perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any
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obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so
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much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds
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do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
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However, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it behooves him to
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exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest, after all, he find himself in
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a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse,
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a prison, or a splendid mausoleum. Instead, consider first, how slight
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a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Panobscot Indians in this town living
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in tents of thin cotton cloth while the snow was nearly a foot deep around
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them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to
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keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly with
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freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more
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than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous. I used
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to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide,
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in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested
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to me that every man who has hard pushed might get such a one for
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a dollar, and having bored a few auger holes in it to admit the
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air at least get into it when it rained, and at night, and
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hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love and in his
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soul, be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any
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means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased,
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and whenever you got up, go abroad, without any landlord or house lord
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dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the
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rent of a larger and more luxurious box. Who would not have frozen to
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death in such a box as this? I am far from jesting. Economy
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is a subject which admits of being treated with levity. But I cannot so
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be disposed of a comfortable house for a rude and hardy race that lived mostly
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out of doors was once made here almost entirely of such materials as nature furnished
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ready to their hands. Guchan, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to
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the Massachusetts Colony, writing in sixteen seventy four, says, quote, the
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best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks
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of trees slipped from their bodies. At those seasons when the sap is up
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and may into great flakes with pressure of weighty timber when they are green.
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The meaner sort are covered with mats, which they make of a kind of
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bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as
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the former. Some I have seen sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty
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feet broad. I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as
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warm as the best English houses. He adds that they were commonly carpeted and
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lined within with well wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils.
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The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by
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a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string.
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Such a lodge was, in the first instance, constructed in a day or
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two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours,
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and every family owned one or its apartment. In one end of Chapter one, Part two