Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 03 - Walden - Henry David Thoreau

Transcript

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

0:00
Chapter one, Economy, LibriVox. Part three. In the savage state,
0:09
every family owns a shelter, as good as the best, and sufficient for
0:13
its coarser and simpler wants. But I think that I speak within bounds when
0:18
I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and
0:23
the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society,
0:30
not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large
0:36
towns and cities where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a
0:43
shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual
0:50
tax for this outside garment of all become indispensable summer and winter, which would
0:58
buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as
1:04
long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage
1:10
of hiring compared with owning. But it is evident that the savage owns his
1:17
shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because
1:25
he cannot afford to own it, nor can he, in the long run
1:29
any better afford to hire. But answers one By merely paying this tax,
1:38
the poor civilized man secures an abode, which is a palace compared with the
1:44
savages, an annual rent of from twenty five to one hundred dollars. These
1:51
are the country rates. Entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries,
1:57
spacious apartments, paint and paper, rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian
2:06
blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other
2:10
things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things
2:16
is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage who has them not
2:23
is rich as a savage. If it is asserted that civilization is a real
2:30
advance in the condition of man, and I think that it is, though
2:34
only the wise improve their advantages, it must be shown that it has produced
2:40
better dwellings without making them more costly. And the cost of a thing is
2:47
the amount of what I will call life, which is required to be exchanged
2:53
for it immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood
3:00
costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from
3:07
ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life, even if he is not encumbered
3:12
with a family, estimating the pecuniary value of every man's labor at one dollar
3:17
a day, for if some receive more, others receive less, so that
3:23
he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be
3:30
earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but
3:36
a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his
3:42
wigwam for a palace? On these terms, it may be guessed that I
3:46
reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store
3:53
against the future, so far as the individual is concerned mainly to the defas
4:00
fraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself.
4:06
Nevertheless, this points to an important distinction between civilized man and the savage,
4:15
And no doubt they have designs on us for our benefit in making the
4:18
life of a civilized people an institution in which the life of the individual is
4:25
to a great extent absorbed in order to preserve and perfect that of the race.
4:31
But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present
4:39
obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all
4:45
the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean you by saying that
4:51
the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour
4:57
grapes and the children's teeth are set on end? As I live, saith
5:01
the Lord God, you shall not have occasion anymore to use this proverb.
5:09
In Israel. Behold, all souls are mine, as the soul of the
5:15
father soul. Also the soul of the son is mine. The soul that
5:20
sinneth it shall die. When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord,
5:28
who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find
5:32
that for the most part they have been toiling twenty thirty or forty years,
5:40
that they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have
5:45
inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money. And we may regard
5:53
one third of that toil as the cost of their houses, but commonly they
5:58
have not paid for them. Yet. It is true the encumbrances sometimes outweigh
6:03
the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance,
6:11
and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with
6:15
it. As he says, on applying to the assessors, I am surprised
6:21
to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own
6:26
their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of these homesteads,
6:32
inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually
6:38
paid for his farm with labor on. It is so rare that every neighbor
6:44
can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord.
6:49
What has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority,
6:54
even ninety seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true
6:59
of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them
7:02
says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures,
7:11
but merely failures to fulfill their engagements, because it is inconvenient. That is,
7:17
it is the moral character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely
7:23
worse face on the matter, and suggests, besides, that probably not even
7:28
the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a
7:34
worse sense than they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from
7:43
which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets. But the savage stands
7:49
on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middle Sex cattle show goes off
7:58
here with ecla annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were
8:03
suant. The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a
8:11
formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoe strings, he
8:16
speculates in herds of cattle with consummate skill. He has set his trap with
8:22
a hair spring to catch comfort and independence, and then as he turned away,
8:30
got his own leg into it. This is the reason he is poor,
8:35
and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand
8:39
savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman sings quote the false society
8:48
of men for earthly greatness, all heavenly comforts rarefies to air. And when
8:58
the fire armor has got his house, he may not be the richer,
9:03
but the poorer for it, And it be the house that has got him.
9:09
As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against
9:16
the house which Minerva made that she quote had not made it movable, by
9:22
which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided end quote. And it may still
9:28
be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned
9:35
rather than housed in them. And the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our
9:39
own scurvy selves. I know one or two families at least in this town
9:48
who for nearly a generation have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts
9:54
and move into the village, but have not been able to accomplish it,
9:58
And only death will set them free. Granted that the majority are able at
10:03
last either to own or hire the modern house, with all its improvements.
10:09
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men
10:16
who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not
10:22
so easy to create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man's pursuits are
10:30
no worthier than the savages, if he is employed the greater part of his
10:35
life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts. Merely, why should he have a
10:41
better dwelling than the former? But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps
10:48
it will be found that, just in proportion, as some have been placed
10:52
in outward circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him. The
11:01
luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one
11:09
side is the palace. On the other are the alms house and silent poor.
11:18
The Myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the pharaohs were
11:22
fed on garlic, and it may be, were not decently buried themselves.
11:30
The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night, perchance to
11:35
a hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose
11:41
that in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of
11:48
a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of
11:54
savages. I refer to the degraded poor, were not now to the degraded
12:03
rich. To know this, I should not need to look farther than to
12:07
the shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization. Where
12:16
I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties and all winter with
12:22
an open door for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable
12:30
wood pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by
12:35
the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all
12:41
their limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that
12:48
class by whose labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Such,
12:54
too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives
13:00
of every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world.
13:07
Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the
13:11
white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish
13:20
with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or
13:24
any other savage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized man.
13:31
Yet I have no doubt that people's rulers are as wise as the average of
13:37
civilized rulers. Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. I
13:48
hardly need refer now to the laborers in our southern states, who produce the
13:54
staple exports of this country, and are themselves a step production of the South.
14:03
But to confine myself to those who are said to be in moderate circumstances.
14:11
Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are
14:16
actually, though needlessly poor all their lives, because they think that they must
14:24
have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear
14:30
any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or gradually
14:37
leaving off palm leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times
14:43
because he could not afford to buy him a crown. It is possible to
14:48
invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all
14:54
would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always study
15:01
to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less.
15:09
Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach by precept and example the necessity of
15:16
the young man's providing a certain number of superfluous glow shoes and umbrellas, and
15:24
empty guest chambers for empty guests before he dies? Why should not our furniture
15:33
be as simple as the Arabs or the Indians? When I think of the
15:41
benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers
15:48
of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue
15:56
at their heels, any car load of fashionable furniture. Or what if I
16:03
were to allow, would it not be a singular allowance that our furniture should
16:11
be more complex than the Arabs in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his
16:19
superiors. At present, our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, And
16:27
a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole and not
16:33
leave her morning's work undone mourning work by the blushes of Aurora and the music
16:42
of Memnon. What should be man's mourning work in this world? I had
16:51
three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that
16:57
they required to be dusted daily when the furniture of my mind was all undusted
17:06
still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How then could I
17:11
have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for
17:18
no dust gathers on the grass unless where man has broken ground. It is
17:26
the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.
17:33
The traveler, who stops at the best houses so called, soon discovers this,
17:40
for the publicans presume him to be assard Napolis, and if he resigned
17:47
himself to their tender mercies, he would soon be completely emasculated. I think
17:56
that in the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on
18:02
safety and convenience, and it threatens, without attaining these, to become no
18:07
better than a modern drawing room, with its divans and ottomans, and sunshades,
18:15
and a hundred other oriental things which we are taking west with us,
18:19
invented for the ladies of the Harem and the effeminate natives of the celestial Empire,
18:26
which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names of. I would rather
18:33
sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a
18:38
velvet cushion. I would rather ride on Earth in an ox cart with a
18:47
free circulation, than go to Heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train
18:52
and breathe a malaria all the way. The very simplicity and nakedness of man
19:00
life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least that they left him
19:07
still but a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep,
19:14
he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in
19:21
a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing
19:26
the plains, or climbing the mountain tops. But lo men have become the
19:33
tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was
19:38
hungry is become a farmer, and he who stood under a tree for shelter
19:45
a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have
19:51
settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an
19:57
improved method of agriculture. We have built for this world a family mansion,
20:07
and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the
20:12
expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition. But the effect of
20:19
our art is merely to make this low state comfortable, and that higher state
20:27
to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this village for a work
20:34
of fine art, if any had come down to us to stand for our
20:41
lives. Our houses and streets furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is
20:48
not a nail to hang a picture on, or a shelf to receive the
20:53
bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how our houses are
21:02
built and paid for or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and
21:10
sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way under the visitor while
21:15
he is admiring the gougaws upon the mantel piece, and let him throw into
21:21
the cellar to some solid and honest, though earthy foundation. I cannot but
21:29
perceive that this so called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at,
21:38
And I do not get on in the enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn
21:42
it, my attention being wholly occupied with the jump. For I remember that
21:52
the greatest genuine leap due to human muscles alone on record is that of certain
22:00
wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty five feet on level ground
22:08
without factitious support. Man is sure to come to Earth again beyond that distance.
22:15
The first question which I am tempted to put to the proprietor of such
22:19
great impropriety, is who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety seven
22:27
who fail, or the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, and
22:34
then perhaps I may look at your babbles and find them ornamental. The cart
22:41
before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses
22:48
with beautiful objects, the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be
22:53
stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation. Now,
23:03
a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there
23:10
is no house and no house keeper. Old Johnson, in his wonder Working
23:18
Providence, speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he was
23:25
contemporary, tells us that quote they burrow themselves in the earth for their first
23:32
shelter, under some hillside, and casting the soil aloft upon timber, they
23:37
make a smoky fire against the earth at the highest side. End quote they
23:45
did not quote provide them houses. End quote says he quote till the earth,
23:52
by the Lord's blessing, brought forth bread to feed them. End quote.
24:00
When the first ear's crop was so light that quote, they were forced
24:04
to cut their bread very thin for a long season end quote. The Secretary
24:11
of the Province of New Netherland, writing in Dutch in sixteen fifty for the
24:18
information of those who wish to take up land there states more particularly that quote,
24:25
those in New Netherland, and especially in New England, who have no
24:29
means to build farmhouses at first, according to their wishes, dig a square
24:33
pit in the ground cellar fashion six or seven feet deep, as long and
24:40
as broad as they think proper. Case the earth inside with wood all around
24:45
the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else
24:49
to prevent the caving inn of the earth floor this cellar with plank and wains
24:56
caught it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of sp spars, clear
25:00
up and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so that they can
25:06
live dry and warm in these houses with their entire families for two three and
25:11
four years. It being understood that partitions are run through these cellars, which
25:18
are adapted to the size of the family. The wealthy and principal men in
25:23
New England in the beginning of the colonies commenced their first to dwelling houses in
25:30
this fashion for two reasons. Firstly, in order not to waste time in
25:36
building and not to want food the next season. Secondly, in order not
25:42
to discourage poor laboring people, whom they brought over in numbers from fatherland.
25:48
In the course of three or four years, when the country became adapted to
25:52
agriculture, they built themselves handsome houses, spending on them several thousand. In
26:03
this course which our ancestors took, there was a show of prudence, at
26:07
least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants first.
26:15
But are the more pressing wants satisfied? Now? When I think of acquiring
26:22
for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, I am deterred, For so to
26:29
speak, the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we are
26:36
still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten.
26:45
Not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected, even in the rudest
26:49
periods, But let our houses first be lined with beauty where they come in
26:57
contact with our lives, Like the tenement of the shell fish, and not
27:04
overlaid with it. But alas I have been inside one or two of them
27:15
and know what they are lined with. Though we are not so degenerate,
27:21
but that we might possibly live in a cave or a wigwam, or wear
27:25
skins to day, it certainly is better to accept the advantages, though so
27:30
dearly bought, which the invention and industry of mankind offer. In such a
27:37
neighborhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and bricks are cheaper and more
27:44
easily obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities,
27:49
or even well tempered clay of or flat stones. I speak understandingly on
27:57
this subject, for I have made my self acquainted with it, both theoretically
28:02
and practically. With a little more wit, we might use these materials so
28:07
as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our civilization a
28:14
blessing. The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage. But to
28:23
make haste to my own experiment, near the end of March eighteen forty five,
28:29
I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond,
28:34
nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down
28:40
some tall, arrowy white pines still in their youth for timber. It is
28:45
difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus,
28:52
to permit your fellow man to have an interest in your enterprise. The
28:57
owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that
29:02
it was the apple of his eye. But I returned it sharper than I
29:07
received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine
29:12
woods through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field
29:18
in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The ice in the
29:23
pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it
29:30
was all dark colored and saturated with water. There were some slight flurries of
29:36
snow during the days that I worked there, but for the most part.
29:40
When I came out on to the railroad on my way home, its yellow
29:45
sand heap stretched away, gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone
29:51
in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and powee and other birds
29:56
already come to commence another year with us. They were pleasant spring days in
30:03
which the winter of man's discontent was thawing, as well as the earth,
30:10
and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day,
30:18
when my axe had come off, and I had cut a green hickory for
30:22
a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the hole to
30:26
soak in a pond hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a
30:32
striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently
30:37
without inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more than a quarter
30:44
of an hour, perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the
30:48
torpid state. It appeared to me that, for a likely reason, men
30:55
remain in their present low and primitive condition. But if they should feel the
31:03
influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to
31:11
a higher and more ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty
31:18
mornings in my path, with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible,
31:22
waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the first of April, it
31:29
rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day,
31:33
which was very foggy. I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond
31:40
and cackling, as if lost or like the spirit of the fog. So
31:47
I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber and also studs and rafters,
31:52
all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar like thoughts,
32:00
singing to myself, men say they know many things, but lo,
32:07
they have taken wings, the arts and sciences, and a thousand appliances.
32:15
The wind that blows is all that any body knows. I hewed the main
32:22
timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides only, and
32:28
the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark
32:32
on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than the sawed
32:37
ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I
32:45
had borrowed other tools by this time. My days in the woods were not
32:52
very long ones. Yet I usually carried my dinner of bread and butter and
32:58
read the newspaper in which it was wrapped. At noon, sitting amid the
33:02
green pine boughs which I had cut off and to my bread, was imparted
33:08
some of their fragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat of
33:13
pitch before I had done. I was more the friend than the foe of
33:20
the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having become
33:24
better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted by the
33:30
sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips, which I
33:36
had made. By the middle of April, for I made no haste in
33:39
my work, but rather made the most of it. My house was framed
33:45
and ready for the raising. I had already bought the shanty of James Collins,
33:52
an irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James collins
33:58
shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. When I called to see it,
34:04
he was not at home. I walked about the outside at first, unobserved
34:08
from within. The windows were so deep and high. It was of small
34:15
dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen,
34:22
the dirt being raised five feet all around as if it were a compost
34:27
heap. The roof was the soundest part, though a good deal warped and
34:32
made brittle by the sun. Door sill. There was none but a perennial
34:38
passage for the hens under the door board. Missus C came to the door
34:45
and asked me to view it from the inside. The hens were driven in
34:50
by my approach. It was dark and had a dirt floor for the most
34:55
part, dank, clammy and egoish. Only here a board, and there
35:01
a board which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show me
35:07
the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor
35:13
extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the cellar, a
35:16
sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own words, they were
35:22
good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good window of two
35:28
whole squares. Originally only the cat had passed out that way. Lately,
35:34
there was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit an infant
35:38
in the house where it was borne, a silk parasol gilt framed looking glass,
35:45
and a patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling. All told,
35:52
the bargain was soon concluded, for James had, in the meantime,
35:55
returned I to pay four dollars and twenty five cents to night. He'd to
36:02
vacate at five tomorrow morning, selling to nobody else. Meanwhile, I to
36:08
take possession at six. It were well, he said, to be there
36:14
early and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of ground rent
36:20
and fuel. This, he assured me, was the only encumbrance. At
36:27
six I passed him and his family on the road. One large bundle held
36:31
there, all bed coffee mill looking glass hens, all but the cat.
36:40
She took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I
36:45
learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a
36:52
dead cat. At last, I took down this dwelling the same morning,
36:55
drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond on side by small cartloads,
37:01
spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in
37:06
the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or two. As I
37:10
drove along the woodland path, I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick that
37:17
neighbor Sealy, an irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the
37:23
still tolerable, straight and drivable nails, staples and spikes to his pocket,
37:31
and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day and look
37:36
freshly up, unconcerned with spring thoughts at the devastation, there being a dearth
37:42
of work. As he said, he was there to represent Spectatordom and help
37:47
make this seemingly insignificant event one with the removal of the gods of Troy.
37:54
I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south,
37:59
where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow down through sumac and BlackBerry roots and
38:07
the lowest stain of vegetation six feet square by seven deep, to a fine
38:13
sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter. The sides were left shelving
38:21
and not stoned, but the sun having never shone on them, the sand
38:25
still keeps its place. It was but two hours work. I took particular
38:32
pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into
38:38
the earth for an equable temperature under The most splendid house in the city is
38:46
still to be found, the cellar where they store their roots. As of
38:51
old, and long after the superstructure has disappeared, posterity remark its dent in
38:58
the earth. The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance
39:06
of a borough at length in the beginning of May, with the help of
39:10
some of my acquaintances, Rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness,
39:16
than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No
39:22
man was ever more honored in the character of his razors than I. They
39:28
are destined I trust to assist at the raising of loftier structures. One day.
39:34
I began to occupy my house on the fourth of July, as soon
39:37
as it was boarded and roofed, For the boards were carefully feather edged and
39:43
lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to reign. But before boarding I
39:50
laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cart loads of
39:53
stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built the chimn
40:00
after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth,
40:07
doing my cooking in the meanwhile out of doors on the ground early in the
40:12
morning, which mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable
40:17
than the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I
40:22
fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my
40:28
loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days when
40:35
my hands were much employed, I read but little. But the least scraps
40:42
of paper which lay on the ground my holder or tablecloth, afforded me as
40:47
much entertainment. In fact, answered the same purpose as the Iliad. It
40:54
would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did, considering,
41:00
for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar,
41:07
a garret have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure
41:15
until we found a better reason for it than are temporal necessities. Even there
41:22
is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there
41:28
is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows. But if men
41:35
constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families
41:40
simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds
41:49
universally sing when they are so engaged, but alas we do, like cowbirds
41:58
and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built,
42:02
and cheer no traveler with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign
42:10
the pleasure of construction to the carpenter. What does architecture amount to in the
42:16
experience of the mass of men? I never, in all my walks came
42:23
across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house.
42:32
We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is
42:38
the ninth part of a man. It is as much the preacher, and
42:44
the merchant and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end?
42:52
And what object does it finally serve? No doubt, another may also think
42:59
for me, but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to
43:05
the exclusion of my thinking for myself. True, there are architects so called
43:13
in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the
43:16
idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and
43:23
hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very
43:30
well, perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than
43:35
the common dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the cornice,
43:44
not at the foundation. It was only how to put a core of
43:50
truth within the ornaments, that every sugarplum, in fact, might have an
43:55
almond or caraway seed in it, though I hold it almond are most wholesome
44:00
without the sugar. And not how the inhabitant the indweller might build truly within
44:08
and without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves. What reasonable man,
44:16
ever, supposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skin, merely
44:24
that the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shell fish its mother of
44:30
pearl tints by such a contract, as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity church.
44:39
But a man has no more to do with the style of architecture of
44:44
his house than a tortoise with that of its shell. Nor need the soldier
44:51
be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on
44:55
his standard. The enemy will find it out. He may turn pale when
45:02
the trial comes. This man seemed to me to lean over the cornice and
45:10
timidly whisper his half truth to the rude occupants, who really knew it better
45:15
than he. What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually
45:23
grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller,
45:31
who is the only builder out of some unconscious truthfulness and nobleness, without ever
45:40
a thought for the appearance. And what additional beauty of this kind is destined
45:46
to be produced, will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life.
45:52
The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the
45:59
most unpretending humble log huts and cottages of the poor. Commonly, it is
46:08
the life of the inhabitants, whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity
46:15
in their surfaces, merely which make them picturesque and equally interesting will be the
46:22
citizen's suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to
46:30
the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of
46:37
his dwelling. A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a
46:46
September gale would strip them off like borrowed plumes without injury to the substantials.
46:54
They can do without architecture who have no olive nor wines in the cellar.
47:02
What if an equal adieu were made about the ornaments of style in literature and
47:10
the architects of our bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects
47:16
of our churches do. So are made the beletre and the beaus are,
47:24
and their professors much. It concerns a man forsooth how a few sticks are
47:30
slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box.
47:37
It would signify somewhat if, in any earnest sense he slanted them and
47:45
daubed it. But the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is
47:51
of a piece with constructing his own coffin. The architecture of the grave and
48:00
carpenter is but another name for coffin maker. One man says, in his
48:07
despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at your
48:13
feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of his last
48:20
and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well? What an
48:27
abundance of leisure he must have. Why do you take up a handful of
48:34
dirt? Better paint your house your own complexion. Let it turn pale or
48:42
blush for you an enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture. When you
48:51
have got my ornaments ready, I will wear them before winter, I built
48:58
a chimney and shingle the sides of my house, which were already impervious to
49:02
rain, with imperfect and sappy shingles made of the first slice of the log,
49:09
whose edges I was obliged to straighten with a plane. I have thus
49:15
a tight, shingled and plastered house ten feet wide by fifteen long and eight
49:21
feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each
49:25
side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick
49:30
fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for
49:36
such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which
49:40
was done by myself, was as follows, and I give the details because
49:45
very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still,
49:50
if any, the separate cost of the various materials which compose them.
49:55
Boards eight dollars three cents plus mostly shanty boards, refuse shingles for roof sides
50:07
four dollars, laths a dollar twenty five two second hand windows with glass two
50:15
dollars forty three cents. One thousand old brick four dollars. Two casks of
50:24
lime two dollars forty cents. That was high. Hair thirty one cents more
50:35
than I needed, mantle, tree, iron fifteen cents, nails three dollars
50:43
ninety cents, hinges and screws fourteen cents, latch ten cents, chalk one
50:52
cent, transportation one dollar forty cents. I carried a good part on my
50:59
back in all twenty eight dollars and twelve cents plus. These are all the
51:07
materials, excepting the timber, stones and sand, which I claimed by squatter's
51:13
right. I have also a small wood shed adjoining, made chiefly of the
51:17
stuff which was left after building the house. I intend to build me a
51:22
house which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury,
51:28
as soon as it pleases me as much, and will cost me no
51:31
more than my present one. I thus found that the student who wishes for
51:37
a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime, at an expense not greater than
51:42
the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than
51:47
is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself,
51:55
and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement,
52:02
notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy, chaff which I find it difficult to separate from
52:08
my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man. I
52:14
will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect. It is such a relief
52:21
to both the moral and physical system. And I am resolved that I will
52:27
not, through humility, become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak
52:34
a good word for the truth. At Cambridge College, the mere rent of
52:39
a student's room, which is only a little larger than my own, is
52:45
thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the advantage of building thirty two
52:52
side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of
52:57
many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. I
53:04
cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom in these respects, not
53:10
only less education would be needed, because forsooth more would already have been acquired,
53:17
but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish
53:24
those conveniences which the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else
53:31
ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they would with proper management.
53:37
On both sides, those things for which the most money is demanded are never
53:44
the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an
53:50
important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which
53:57
he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries, no charge is
54:04
made. The mode of founding a college is commonly to get up a subscription
54:10
of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division
54:16
of labor to its extreme, a principle which should never be followed, but
54:21
with circumspection, to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation,
54:28
and he employs irishmen or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, while
54:35
the students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves for it,
54:40
and for these oversights successive generations have to pay. I think that it would
54:46
be better than this for the students, or those who desire to be benefited
54:52
by it, even to lay the foundation themselves. The student who secures his
55:00
coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an
55:07
ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure
55:15
fruitful. But says one, you do not mean that the students should go
55:22
to work with their hands instead of their heads. I do not mean that
55:27
exactly, but I mean something which he might think a good deal like that.
55:35
I mean that they should not play life or study it merely while the
55:43
community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to
55:52
end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the
56:00
experiment of living. Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics.
56:10
If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for
56:15
instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send
56:21
him into the neighborhood of some professor, where anything is professed and practiced,
56:25
but the art of life, to survey the world through a telescope or a
56:31
microscope, and never with his natural eye. To study chemistry and not learn
56:39
how his bread is made, or mechanics and not learn how it is earned.
56:47
To discover new satellites, to Neptune, and not detect the motes in
56:57
his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself, or to
57:05
be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him while contemplating the monsters in
57:12
a drop of vinegar, which would have advanced the most at the end of
57:19
a month, the boy who had made his own jackknife from the oar which
57:25
he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this,
57:31
or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in
57:37
the meanwhile, and had received a Roger's penknife from his father, which would
57:45
be most likely to cut his fingers. To my astonishment, I was informed
57:52
on leaving college that I had studied navigation. Why if I had taken one
57:59
turn down the harbor, I should have known more about it. Even the
58:04
poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living,
58:10
which is synonymous with philosophy, is not even sincerely professed in our colleges.
58:17
The consequence is that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo and Say,
58:24
he runs his father in debt irretrievably. End Chapter one, Part three,