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

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  Chapter eight the village. After hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing in the
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  forenoon, I usually bathed again in the pond, swimming across one of its
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  coves for a stint, and washed the dust of labor from my person,
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  or smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had made, and for the afternoon
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  was absolutely free. Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear
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  some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth
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  to mouth or from newspaper to newspaper, and which taken in homeopathic doses,
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  was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping
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  of frogs. As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels,
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  so I walked in the village to see the men and boys. Instead
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  of the wind. Among the pines, I heard the carts rattle. In
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  one direction from my house, there was a colony of myne scrats in the
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  river meadows, under the grove of elms and button woods. In the other
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  horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they
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  had been prairie dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or
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  running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their
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  habits. The village appeared to me a great news room, and on one
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  side to support it, as once at reading and companies on State Street,
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  they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and other groceries. Some
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  have such a vast appetite for the former commodity, that is the news,
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  and such sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in public avenues without
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  stirring, and let it simmer and whisper through them like the Atessian winds,
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  or as if inhaling ether it only producing numbness and insensibility to pain, otherwise
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  it would often be painful to bear without affecting the consciousness. I hardly,
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  ever, failed, when I rambled through the village to see a row of
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  such worthies, either sitting on a ladder, sunning themselves, with their bodies
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  inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line this way and that from time
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  to time with a voluptuous expression, or else leaning against a barn with their
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  hands and their pockets like caryatides, as if to prop it up they,
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  being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. These are
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  the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or cracked up,
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  before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within doors. I
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  observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery, the bar room,
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  the post office, and the bank. And as a necessary part of the
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  machinery, they kept a bell, a big gun, and a fire engine
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  at convenient places, and the houses were so arranged as to make the most
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  of mankind in lanes and fronting one another, so that every traveler had to
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  run the gauntlet, and every man, woman and child might get a lick
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  at him. Of course, those who were stationed nearest to the head of
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  the line, where they could most see and be seen, and have the
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  first blow at him, paid the highest prices for their places, and the
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  few straggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line began to
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  occur and the traveler could get over walls or turn aside into cow paths and
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  so escape, paid a very slight ground or window tax. Signs were hung
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  out on all sides to allure him, some to catch him by the appetite,
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  as the tavern and victulling cellar, some by the fancy, as the
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  dry goods store and the jewelers, and others by the hair or the feet,
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  or the skirts, as the barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor.
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  Besides, there was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at every
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  one of these houses, and company expected about these times. For the most
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  part, I escaped wonderfully from these dangers, either by proceeding at once,
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  boldly and without deliberation, to the goal, as is recommended to those who
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  run the gauntlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high things, like Orpheus,
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  who, loudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre, drowned
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  the voices of the sirens, and kept out of danger. Sometimes I bolted
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  suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did not stand much
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  about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a fence. I was
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  even accustomed to make an irruption into some houses where I was well entertained,
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  and after learning the colonels and very last sieve full of news what had subsided
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  the prospects of worn peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together
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  much longer. I was let out through the rear avenues and so escaped to
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  the woods again. It was very pleasant when I stayed late in town to
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  launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark and tepestuous, and
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  set sail for some bright village parlor or lecture room, with a bag of
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  rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods,
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  having made all tight without and withdrawn under hatches, with a merry crew
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  of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at the helm, or even tying
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  up the helm. When it was plain sailing, I had many a genial
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  thought by the cabin fire as I sailed. I was never cast away nor
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  distressed in any weather, though I encountered some severe storms. It is darker
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  in the woods, even in common nights than most suppose. I frequently had
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  to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to
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  learn my route, and where there was no cart path, to feel with
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  my feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by the known
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  relation of particular trees which I felt with my hands. Passing between two pines,
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  for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of
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  the woods, invariably in the darkest night, sometimes after coming home, thus
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  late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which
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  my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent minded all the way until I
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  was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch. I have
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  not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have
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  thought that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake
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  it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance. Several
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  times, when a visitor chanced to stay until evening, and it proved a
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  dark night, I was obliged to conduct him to the cart path in the
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  rear of the house, and then point out to him the direction he was
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  to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided rather by his
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  feet than his eyes. One very dark night I directed thus on their way
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  two young men who had been fishing in the pond. They lived about a
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  mile off through the woods, and were quite used to the route. A
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  day or two after, one of them told me that they wandered about the
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  greater part of the night, close by their own premises, and did not
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  get home till toward morning, by which time, as there had been several
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  heavy showers in the meanwhile and the leaves were very wet, they were drenched
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  to their skins. I have heard of many going astray, even in the
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  village streets, when the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with
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  a knife. As the saying is, some who live in the outskirts,
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  having come to town a shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put
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  up for the night, and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half
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  a mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet,
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  and not knowing when they turned. It is a surprising and memorable, as
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  well as valuable experience to be lost in the woods any time, often in
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  a snow storm, even by day. One will come out upon a well
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  known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village.
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  Though he knows that he has traveled at a thousand times, he cannot
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  recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if
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  it were a road in Siberia. By night. Of course, the perplexity
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  is infinitely greater. In our most trivial walks. We are constantly, though
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  unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well known beacons and headlands. And if
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  we go beyond our usual course, we still carry in our minds the bearing
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  of some neighboring cape. And not till we are completely lost or turned round,
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  For a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut
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  in this world to be lost do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.
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  Every Man has to learn the points of compass again as often as be
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  awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost.
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  In other words, not till we have lost the world do we begin to
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  find ourselves and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
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  One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to
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  the village to get a shoe from the cobblers, I was seized and put
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  into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay
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  a tax to or recognize the authority of the state which buys and sells men,
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  women and children like cattle at the door of its senate house. I
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  had gone down to the woods for other purposes. But wherever a man goes,
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  men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and if they
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  can constrain him to belong to their desperate odd fellow society. It is true
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  I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run a
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  mock against society. But I preferred that society should run a mock against me,
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  it being the desperate party. However, I was released the next day,
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  obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to get
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  my dinner of Huckleberry's on fair Haven Hill. I was never molested by any
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  person but those who represented the state. I had no lock nor bolt but
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  for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over
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  my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though
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  I was to be absent several days, not even when the next fall I
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  spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more
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  respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers. The tired
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  rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire the literary amuse himself with a
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  few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door,
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  see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of
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  supper. Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the
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  pond, I suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed
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  anything but one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly
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  gilded. And this I trust a soldier of our camp has found. By
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  this time, I am convinced that if all men were to live as simply
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  as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place
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  only in communities, where some have got more than is sufficient, while others
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  have not enough. The Pope's homers would soon get properly distributed. Nec Bella
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  feront phaginus, astabat domscyphus ante dappus nor wars did men molest when only beechen
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  bulls were in request? You, who govern public affairs, what need have
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  you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous.
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  The virtues of a superior man are like the wind. The virtues of a
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  common man are like the grass. Aye. The grass, when the wind
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  passes over it bends. End of Chapter eight