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CHAPTER 8 The Village
After hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the forenoon, I usually bathed
again in the pond, swimming across one of its coves for a stint, and washed the dust
of labor from my person, or smoothed out
the last wrinkle which study had made, and for the afternoon was absolutely free.
Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is
incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from
newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in
homoeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of
leaves and the peeping of frogs.
As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village
to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts
rattle.
In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows;
under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy
men, as curious to me as if they had been
prairie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's
to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their
habits.
The village appeared to me a great news room; and on one side, to support it, as
once at Redding & Company's on State Street, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt
and meal and other groceries.
Some have such a vast appetite for the former commodity, that is, the news, and
such sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in public avenues without
stirring, and let it simmer and whisper
through them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, it only producing
numbness and insensibility to pain-- otherwise it would often be painful to
bear--without affecting the consciousness.
I hardly ever failed, when I rambled through the village, to see a row of such
worthies, either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, with their bodies
inclined forward and their eyes glancing
along the line this way and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous expression, or
else leaning against a barn with their hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as
if to prop it up.
They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind.
These are the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or cracked
up before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within doors.
I observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery, the bar-room, the post-
office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a
big gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient
places; and the houses were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and
fronting one another, so that every traveller had to run the gauntlet, and
every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him.
Of course, those who were stationed nearest to the head of the line, where they could
most see and be seen, and have the first blow at him, paid the highest prices for
their places; and the few straggling
inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line began to occur, and the
traveller could get over walls or turn aside into cow-paths, and so escape, paid a
very slight ground or window tax.
Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to catch him by the appetite, as
the tavern and victualling cellar; some by the fancy, as the dry goods store and the
jeweller's; and others by the hair or the
feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor.
Besides, there was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at every one of
these houses, and company expected about these times.
For the most part I escaped wonderfully from these dangers, either by proceeding at
once boldly and without deliberation to the goal, as is recommended to those who run
the gauntlet, or by keeping my thoughts on
high things, like Orpheus, who, "loudly singing the praises of the gods to his
lyre, drowned the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of danger."
Sometimes I bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did not
stand much about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a fence.
I was even accustomed to make an irruption into some houses, where I was well
entertained, and after learning the kernels and very last sieveful of news--what had
subsided, the prospects of war and peace,
and whether the world was likely to hold together much longer--I was let out through
the rear avenues, and so escaped to the woods again.
It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch myself into the night,
especially if it was dark and tempestuous, and set sail from some bright village
parlor or lecture room, with a bag of rye
or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods, having made all
tight without and withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only
my outer man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing.
I had many a genial thought by the cabin fire "as I sailed."
I was never cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I encountered some severe
storms. It is darker in the woods, even in common
nights, than most suppose.
I frequently had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order
to learn my route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint
track which I had worn, or steer by the
known relation of particular trees which I felt with my hands, passing between two
pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods,
invariably, in the darkest night.
Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the
path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, until I was
aroused by having to raise my hand to lift
the latch, I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought
that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake it, as
the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance.
Several times, when a visitor chanced to stay into evening, and it proved a dark
night, I was obliged to conduct him to the cart-path in the rear of the house, and
then point out to him the direction he was
to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided rather by his feet than his eyes.
One very dark night I directed thus on their way two young men who had been
fishing in the pond.
They lived about a mile off through the woods, and were quite used to the route.
A day or two after one of them told me that they wandered about the greater part of the
night, close by their own premises, and did not get home till toward morning, by which
time, as there had been several heavy
showers in the meanwhile, and the leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their
skins.
I have heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was
so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is.
Some who live in the outskirts, having come to town a-shopping in their wagons, have
been obliged to put up for the night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have
gone half a mile out of their way, feeling
the sidewalk only with their feet, and not knowing when they turned.
It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the
woods any time.
Often in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and
yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village.
Though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times, he cannot recognize a
feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were a road in Siberia.
By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater.
In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering
like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our
usual course we still carry in our minds
the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned
round--for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world
to be lost--do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.
Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes,
whether from sleep or any abstraction.
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to
find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a
shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere
related, I did not pay a tax to, or
recognize the authority of, the State which buys and sells men, women, and children,
like cattle, at the door of its senate- house.
I had gone down to the woods for other purposes.
But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions,
and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.
It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run
"amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok" against me,
it being the desperate party.
However, I was released the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to
the woods in season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill.
I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State.
I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to
put over my latch or windows.
I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not
even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine.
And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of
soldiers.
The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse
himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see
what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper.
Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious
inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed anything but one small book,
a volume of Homer, which perhaps was
improperly gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this time.
I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and
robbery would be unknown.
These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while
others have not enough. The Pope's Homers would soon get properly
distributed.
"Nec bella fuerunt, Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes."
"Nor wars did men ***, When only beechen bowls were in request."
"You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments?
Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous.
The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like
the grass--the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends."