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18 - Walden - Henry David Thoreau · Logic Library

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Chapter thirteen, house Warming. In October, I went a graping to the
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river meadows, and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance
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than for food. There too I admired, though I did not gather the
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cranberries, small waxen gems pendants of the meadow grass, pearly and red,
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which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake, leaving the smooth meadow in a
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snarl, heedlessly measuring them by the bushel and the dollar only, and sells
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the spoils of the meads to Boston and New York, destined to be jammed
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to satisfy the tastes of lovers of nature. There So, butchers raked the
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tongues of bison out of the prairie grass, regards wardless of the torn and
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drooping plant. The barberry's brilliant fruit will likewise food for my eyes merely.
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But I collected a small store of wild apples for coddling, which the proprietor
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and travelers had overlooked. When chestnuts were ripe, I laid up half a
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bushel for winter. It was very exciting at that season to roam the then
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boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln. They now sleep their long sleep under the railroad,
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with a bag on my shoulder and a stick to open birrs with in
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my hand, For I did not always wait for the frost amid the rustling
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of leaves and the loud reproofs of the red squirrels and the jays, whose
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half consumed nuts I sometimes stole, for the burrs which they had selected,
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were sure to contain sound ones. Occasionally I climbed and shook the trees.
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They grew also behind my house, and one large tree which almost overshadowed it
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was when in flower a bouquet which scented the whole neighborhood. But the squirrels
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and the jays got most of its fruit, the last coming in flocks early
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in the morning and picking the nuts out of the burrs before they fell.
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I relinquished these trees to them and visited the more distant woods composed wholly of
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chestnut, many other substitutes might perhaps be found. Digging one day for fishworms,
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I discovered the ground nut Apios tubarosa on its string, the potato of
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the Aborigines, a sort of fabulous fruit which I had begun to doubt if
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I had ever dug an eaten in childhood, as I had told, and
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had not dreamed it. I had often seen its crumpled, red velvety blossom
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supported by the stems of other plants, without knowing it to be the same.
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Cultivation has well nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish taste, much
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like that of a frost bitten potato. When I found it better boiled than
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roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint promise of nature to rear her own
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children and feed them simply here at some future period. In these days of
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fatted cattle and waving grain fields, this humble root, which was once the
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totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its
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flowering vine. But let wild nature rain here once more, and the tender
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and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes. And without
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the care of man. The crow may carry back even the last seed of
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corn to the great cornfield of the Indian's god in the Southwest, whence he
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is said to have brought it. But the now almost exterminated ground nut will
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perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous and
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resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of the Hunter tribe. Some
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Indian Serirees or Minerva must have been the inventor and bestower of it. And
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when the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and string of nuts may
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be represented on our works of art. Already, by the first of September
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I had seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond beneath where
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the white stems of three aspens diverged at the point of a promontory next the
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water. Ah many a tale their color told, and gradually, from week
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to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected
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in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery
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substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious coloring for the old.
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Upon the walls, the wasps came by thousands to my lodge in October
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as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows within and on the walls
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overhead, sometimes deterring visitors from entering. Each morning, when they were numbed
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with cold. I swept some of them out, but I did not trouble
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myself to get rid of them. I even felt complimented by their regard,
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guarding my house as a desirable shelter. They never molested me seriously, though
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they bedded with me, and they gradually disappeared into what crevices I do not
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know, avoiding winter and unspeakable cold like the wasps. Before I finally went
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into winter quarters in November, I used to resort to the northeast side of
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Walden, which the sun reflected from the pitch pine woods in the stony shore
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made the fireside of the pond. It is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to
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be warmed by the sun, while you can be than by an artificial fire.
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I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the summer, like
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a departed hunter, had left. When I came to build my chimney,
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I studied masonry. My bricks, being second hand, ones required to be
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cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the qualities
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of bricks and trowels. The mortar on them was fifty years old and was
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said to be still growing harder. But this is one of those sayings which
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men love to repeat, whether they are true or not. Such sayings themselves
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grow harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it would take many blows
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with a trowel to clean an old wise acre of them. Many of the
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villages of Mesopotamia are built of second hand bricks of a very good quality,
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obtained from the ruins of Babylon, and the cement on them is older and
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probably harder still. However that may be, I was struck by the peculiar
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toughness of the steel, which bore so many violent blows without being worn out,
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as my bricks had been in a chimney before, though I did not
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read the name of Nebuchadnezzar on them. I picked out as many fireplace bricks
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as I could find to save work and waste, and I filled the spaces
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between the bricks about the fireplace with stones from the pond shore, and also
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made my mortar with the white sand from the same place. I lingered most
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about the fireplace as the most vital part of the house. Indeed, I
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worked so deliberately that though I commenced at the ground in the morning. A
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course of bricks raised a few inches above the floor served for my pillow at
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night. Yet I did not get a stiff neck for it. That I
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remember. My stiff neck is of older date. I took a poet to
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board for a fortnight about those times, which caused me to be put to
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it for room. He brought his own knight, though I had two,
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and we used to scour them by thrusting them into the earth. He shared
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with me the labors of cooking. I was pleased to see my work rising
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so square and solid by degrees, and reflected that if it proceeded slowly,
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it was calculated to endure a long time. The chimney is, to some
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extent an independent structure, standing on the ground and rising through the house to
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the heavens. Even after the house is burned, it still stands sometimes,
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and its importance and independence are apparent. This was toward the end of summer.
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It was now November. The north wind had already begun to cool the
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pond, though it took many weeks of steady blowing to accomplish it. It
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is so deep when I began to have a fire at evening before I plastered
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my house. The chimney carried smoke particularly well because of the numerous chinks between
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the boards. Yet I passed some cheerful evenings in that cool and airy apartment,
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surrounded by the rough brown boards full of knots, and rafters with the
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bark on high overhead. My house never pleased my eye so much after it
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was plastered, though I was obliged to confess that it was more comfortable.
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Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity
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overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters. These forms
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are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most
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expensive furniture. I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say
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when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter. I had
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got a couple of old fire dogs to keep the wood from the hearth,
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and it did me good to see the soot form on the back of the
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chimney which I had built, and I poked the fire with more right and
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more satisfaction than usual. My dwelling was small and I could hardly entertain an
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echo in it, but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote
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from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room.
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It was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping room. And whatever satisfaction
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parent or child, master or servant derive from living in a house, I
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enjoyed it all. Cato says the master of a family patrem familius, must
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have in his rustic villa seleem o lieum venerium dolia multa uti lubiet cretatum expectaire
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e ree e vertuti eglorie erit, that is, an oil and wine cellar,
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many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times.
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It will be for his advantage and virtue and glory. I had in my
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cellar a fercin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with a weevil in
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them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses,
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and of rye an Indian meal, a peck each. I sometimes dream of
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a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age of enduring materials,
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and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room.
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A vast, rude, substantial primitive hall without ceiling or plastering, with bare
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rafters and perlans, supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head, useful
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to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out
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to receive your homage when you have done reverence to the prostrate saturn of an
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older dynasty, on stepping over the sill. A cavernous house, wherein you
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must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof. Where some
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may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and
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some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another,
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and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose. A
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house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door and the
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ceremony is over, where the weary traveler may wash and eat, and converse
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and sleep without further journey. Such a shelter as you would be glad to
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reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house and nothing
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for housekeeping, where you can see all the treasures of the house at one
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view, and everything hangs upon its peg. That a man should use at
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once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, store, house, and garret,
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where you can see so necessary a thing as a barrel or a ladder,
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so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil,
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and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven
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that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments.
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Where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the
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mist r. And perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap
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door when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the
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ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping a house whose inside is as
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open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the
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front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants. Where
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to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house,
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and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in
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a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there in solitary confinement.
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Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got
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the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is
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the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much seckccy
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about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am
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aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and might have been
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legally ordered off. But I am not aware that I have been in many
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men's houses. I might visit, in my old clothes a king and queen
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who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were
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going their way. But backing out of a modern palace will be all that
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I shall desire to learn. If ever I am caught in one, it
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would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve
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and degenerate into palaver. Wholly our lives pass such remoteness from its symbols,
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and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched through slides and dumb waiters,
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as it were. In other words, the parlor is so far from
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the kitchen and workshop. The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner
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commonly, as if only the savage dwelt near enough to nature and truth to
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borrow a trope from them. How can the scholar who dwells away in the
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Northwest Territory or the Isle of Man tell what is parliamentary in the kitchen,
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however, only one or two of my guests were ever bold enough to stay
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and eat a hasty pudding with me. But when they saw that crisis approaching,
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they beat a hasty retreat, rather as if it would shake the house
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to its foundations. Nevertheless, it stood through a great many hasty puddings.
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I did not plaster till it was free easing weather. I brought over some
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whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from the opposite shore of the pond in
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a boat, a sort of conveyance which would have tempted me to go much
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farther if necessary. My house had in the meanwhile been shingled down to the
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ground on every side in lathing. I was pleased to be able to send
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home each nail with a single blow of the hammer. And it was my
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ambition to transfer the plaster from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly.
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I remembered the story of a conceited fellow who, in fine clothes was wont
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to lounge about the village, once giving advice to workmen, venturing one day
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to substitute deeds for words, He turned up his cuffs, seized a plasterer's
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board, and, having loaded his trowel without mishap, with a complaisant look
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toward the lathing overhead, made a bold gesture thitherward and straightway. To his
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complete discomfiture, received the whole contents in his ruffled bosom. I admired anew
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the economy and convenience of plastering, which so effectually shuts out the cold and
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takes a handsome finish, And I learned the various casualties to which the plasterer
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is libel. I was surprised to see how thirsty the bricks were, which
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drank up all the moisture in my plaster before I had smoothed it. How
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many pailfuls of water it takes to christen a new hearth. I had the
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previous winter made a small quantity of lime by burning the shells of the unio
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fluviatilis, which our river affords, for the sake of the experiment, so
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that I knew where my materials came from. I might have got good limestone
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within a mile or two, and burned it myself. If I had cared
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to do so. The pond had, in the meanwhile skimmed over in the
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shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks before the general freezing.
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The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark and transparent,
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and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it
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is shallow. For you can lie at your length on ice only an inch
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thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study
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the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a
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picture behind a glass, and the water is necessarily always smooth. Then there
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are many furrows in the sand where some creature has traveled about and doubled on
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its tracks, and for wrecks. It is strewn with the cases of cattis
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worms made of minute grains of white quartz. Perhaps these have creased it,
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for you find some of their cases in the furrows, though they are deep
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and broad for them to make. But the ice itself is the object of
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most interest, though you must improve the earliest opportunity to study it. If
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you examine it closely the morning after it freezes, you find that the greater
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part of the bubbles, which at first appeared to be within it, are
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against its under surface, and that more are continually rising from the bottom,
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while the ice is as yet comparatively solid and dark. That is, you
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see the water through it. These bubbles are from an eightieth to an eighth
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of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your
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face reflected in them through the ice. There may be thirty or forty of
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them to a square inch. There are also already within the ice narrow,
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oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, sharp cones, with the apex
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upward or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spherical bubbles,
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one directly above another, like a string of beads. But these within the
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ice are not so numerous nor obvious as those beneath. I sometimes used to
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cast on stones to try the strength of the ice, and those which broke
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through carried in air with them, which form very large and conspicuous white bubbles
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beneath. One day, when I came to the same place forty eight hours
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afterward, I found that those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch
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more of ice had formed, as I could see distinctly by the seam in
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the edge of a cake. But as the last two days had been very
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warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was now transparent, showing the
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dark green colour of the water and the bottom, but opaque and whitish or
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gray, And though twice as thick, was hardly stronger than before. For
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the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat and run together and lost their
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regularity. They were no longer one directly over another, but often, like
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silvery coins poured from a bag, one overlapping another, or in thin flakes,
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as if occupying slight cleavages. The beauty of the ice was gone,
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and it was too late to study the bottom. Being curious to know what
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position my great bubbles occupied with regard to the new ice, I broke out
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a cake containing a middling sized one, and turned it bottom upward. The
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new ice had formed around and under the bubble, so that it was included
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between the two ices. It was wholly in the lower ice, but close
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against the upper, and was flatish or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a rounded
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edge a quarter of an inch deep. By four inches in diameter, and
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I was surprised to find that directly under the bubble the ice was melted with
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a great regularity, in the form of a saucer reversed to the height of
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five eighths of an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition there between
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the water and the bubble, hardly an eighth of an inch thick. And
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in many places the small bubbles in this partition had burst out downward, and
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probably there was no ice at all under the largest bubbles, which were afoot
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in diameter. I inferred that the infinite number of minute bubbles which I had
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first seen against the under surface of the ice, were now frozen in likewise,
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and that each in its degree had operated like a burning glass on the
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ice beneath, to melt and rot it. These are the little air guns
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which contribute to make the ice crack and whoop at length. The winter set
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in good earnest, just as I had finished plastering, and the wind began
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to howl around the house, as if it had not had permission to do
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so till then. Night after night the geese came lumbering in the dark with
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a clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the ground was covered with
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snow, some to a light in Walden, and some flying low over the
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woods toward fair Haven, bound for Mexico. Several times, when returning from
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the village at ten or eleven o'clock at night, I heard the tread of
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a flock of geese or else ducks on the dry leaves in the woods mya
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pond hole behind my dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and
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the faint honk or quack of their leader as they hurried off. In eighteen
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forty five, Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the night of
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the twenty second of December, flints and other shallower ponds and the river having
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been frozen ten days or more in forty six, the sixteenth, in forty
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nine about the thirty first, and in fifty about the twenty seventh of December.
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In fifty two the fifth of January fifty three, the thirty first of
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December, the snow had already covered the ground since the twenty fifth of November
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and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into
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my shell and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within
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my breast. My employment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood
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in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or
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sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. An old
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forest fence, which had seen its best days was a great haul for me.
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I sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving the god terminus.
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How much more interesting an event is that man's supper who has just been
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forth in the snow to hunt, nay, you might say, steal thee
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fule to cook it with his bread and meat are sweet. There are enough
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faggots and waste wood of all kinds in the forest of most of our towns
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to support many fires, but which at present warm none, and some think
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hinder the growth of the young wood. There was also the drift wood of
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the pond. In the course of the summer, I had discovered a raft
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of pitch pine logs with the bark on pinned together by the Irish when the
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railroad was built. This I hauled up partly on the shore, after soaking
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two years and then lying high six months. It was perfectly sound, though
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water logged past drying. I amused myself one winter day with sliding this piecemeal
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across the pond nearly half a mile, skating behind, with one end of
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a log fifteen feet long on my shoulder and the other on the ice.
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Or I tied several logs together with a birch wive, and then with a
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longer birch or alder, which had a book at the end, dragged them
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across. Though completely water logged and almost as heavy as lead, they not
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only burned long but made a very hot fire. Nay, I thought that
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they burned better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being confined by
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the water, burned longer as in a lamp. Gilpin, in his account
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of the forest Borderers of England, says that the encroachments of trespassers, and
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the houses and fences thus raised on the borders of the forest, were considered
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as great nuisances by the old forest law, and were severely punished under the
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name of pure prestures, as tending at tero reem ferrarm ad nocumentum for a
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stay, et cetera, to the frightening of the game and the detriment of
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the forest. But I was interested in the preservation of the venison and the
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vert more than the hunters or wood choppers, and as much as though I
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had been the lord warden myself. And if any part was burned, though
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I burned it myself by accident, I grieved with a grief that lasted longer
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and was more inconsolable than that of the proprietors. Nay, I grieved when
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it was cut down by the proprietors themselves, my wood. That are farmers,
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when they cut down a forest, felt some of that awe which the
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old Romans did. When they came to thin or let in the light to
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a consecrated grove lussum conlusere, that is, would believe that it is sacred
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to some god. The Roman made an expiatory offering and prayed, whatever God
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or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me,
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my family and children, et cetera. It is remarkable what a value
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is still put upon wood, even in this age and in this new country,
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a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. After all our
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discoveries and inventions, no man will go by a pile of wood. It
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is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors,
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if they made their bows of it. We make our gun stocks of it.
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Michaux, more than thirty years ago, says that the price of wood
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for fuel in New York and Philadelphia nearly equals and sometimes exceeds that of the
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best wood in Paris, though this immense capital annually requires more than three hundred
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thousand cords and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by cultivated plains.
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In this town, the price of wood rises almost steadily, and the
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only question is how much higher it is to be this year than it was
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the last. Mechanics and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no
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other errand are sure to attend the wood auction and even pay a high price
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for the privilege of gleaning after the wood chopper. It is now many years
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that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the material of the arts,
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the New England and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the celt the
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Farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake, and Harry Gill. In most parts
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of the world, the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage
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equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their
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food. Neither could I do without them. Every man looks at his woodpile
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with a kind of affection. I love to have mine before my window,
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and the more chips, the better to remind me of my pleasing work.
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I had an old axe, which nobody claimed, with which by spells in
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winter days and on the sunny side of the house, I played about the
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stumps which I had got out of my beanfield. As my driver prophesied.
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When I was plowing. They warmed me twice, once while I was splitting
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them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel
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could give out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised to
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get the village blacksmith to jump it, but I jumped him, and putting
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a hickory helve from the woods into it made it do. If it was
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dull, it was at least hung. True. A few pieces of fat
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pine were a great treasure. It is interesting to remember how much of this
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food for fire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous
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years I had often gone prospecting over some bare hill side where a pitch pine
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wood had formerly stood, and got out the fat pine roots. They are
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almost indestructible. Stumps thirty or forty years old at least will still be sound
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at the core, though the sap wood has all become vegetable. Mold as
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appears by the scales of the thick bark, forming a ring level with the
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earth, four or five inches distant from the heart. With axe and shovel,
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you explore this mine and follow the marrowy store yellow as beef tallow,
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or as if you had struck on a vein of gold deep into the earth.
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But commonly I kindled my fire with the dry leaves of the forest which
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I had stored up in my shed before the snow came. Green. Hickory
35:32
finely split makes the wood choppers kindlings when he has a camp in the woods.
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Once in a while, I got a little of this when the villagers
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were lighting their fires beyond the horizon. I too, gave notice to the
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various wild inhabitants of Walden Vale by a smoky streamer from my chimney that I
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was awake. Light winged smoke Akarrian bird melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
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lark without a song and messenger of dawn, circling above the hamlets as
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thy nest or else departing dream and shadowy form of midnight vision, gathering up
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thy skirts by night star veiling, and by day darkening the light and blotting
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out the sun. Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, and ask
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the gods to pardon this clear flame, hard green wood, just cut,
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though I used, but little of that answered my purpose better than any other.
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I sometimes left a good fire when I went to take a walk in
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a winter afternoon, and when I returned three or four hours afterward, it
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would be still alive and glowing. My house was not empty though I was
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gone. It was as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It
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was eye and fire that lived there, and commonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy.
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One day, however, as I was splitting wood, I thought that I
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would just look in at the window and see if the house was not on
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fire. It was the only time I remember to having been particularly anxious on
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this score. So I looked and saw that a spark had caught my bed,
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and I went in and extinguished it when it had burned a place as
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big as my hand. But my house occupied so sunny and sheltered a position,
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and its roof was so low, that I could afford to let the
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fire go out. In the middle of almost any winter day, the moles
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nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato and making a snug bed even
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there of some hair left after plastering, and of brown paper. For even
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the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive
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the winter only because they are so careful to secure them. Some of my
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friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself.
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The animal merely makes a bed which he warms with his body in a
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sheltered place. But man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in
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a spacious apartment, and warms that. Instead of robbing himself, makes that
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his bed, in which he can move without divesting of more cumbrous clothing.
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Maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of
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windows even admit the light, and with a lamp lengthen out the day.
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Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time
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for the fine arts. Though, when I had been exposed to the rudest
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blasts a long time, my whole body began to grow torpid. When I
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reached the genial atmosphere of my house, I soon recovered my faculties and prolonged
39:22
my life. But the most luxuriously housed has little to boast of in this
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respect. Nor need we trouble ourselves to speculate how the human race may be
39:34
at last destroyed. It would be easy to cut their threads at any time
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with a little sharper blast from the north. We go on dating from cold
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fridays and great snows, but a little colder Friday or greater snow would put
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a period to man's existence on the globe. The next winter, I used
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a small cooking stove for economy, since I did not own the forest,
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But it did not keep fire so well as the open fireplace. Cooking was,
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then, for the most part, no longer a poetic, but merely
40:17
a chemic process. It will soon be forgotten in these days of stoves that
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we used to roast potatoes in the ashes after the Indian fashion. The stove
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not only took up room and scented the house, but it concealed the fire,
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and I felt as if I had lost a companion. You can always
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see a face in the fire. The laborer looking into it at evening purifies
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his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they have accumulated during the day.
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But I could no longer sit and look into the fire, and the pertinent
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words of a poet recurred to me with new force. Never bright flame may
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be denied to me, thy dear life imaging close sympathy. What but my
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hopes shot upward e'er so bright? What but my fortunes sunk so low in
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night? Why art thou banish'd from our hearth? And hall thou, who
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art welcomed and beloved by all? Was thy existence then too fanciful for our
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life's common light? Who are so dull? Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse
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hold with our congenial souls secrets too bold? Well? We are safe and
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strong, for now we sit beside a hearth where no dim shadows flick'd,
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where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire warms feet in hands. Nor
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does two more aspire by whose compact, utilitarian heap. The present may sit
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down and go to sleep, nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past
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walk'd and with us, by the unequal light of the old wood fire talk'd.
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End of chapter thirteen.