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CHAPTER 1 - PART 2 Economy
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so- called comforts of life, are not only not
indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and
meagre life than the poor.
The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which
none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward.
We know not much about them.
It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do.
The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race.
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground
of what we should call voluntary poverty.
Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or
literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of
philosophy, but not philosophers.
Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live.
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a
school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of
simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.
It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but
practically.
The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not
kingly, not manly.
They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers
did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men.
But why do men degenerate ever?
What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which
enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our
own lives?
The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life.
He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries.
How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods
than other men?
When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want
next?
Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more
splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and
hotter fires, and the like.
When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another
alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on
life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.
The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward,
and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence.
Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same
proportion into the heavens above?--for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they
bear at last in the air and light, far from
the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may
be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut
down at top for this purpose, so that most
would not know them in their flowering season.
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their
own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and
spend more lavishly than the richest,
without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live--if, indeed, there
are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and
inspiration in precisely the present
condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of lovers--and,
to some extent, I reckon myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are
well employed, in whatever circumstances,
and they know whether they are well employed or not;--but mainly to the mass of
men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or
of the times, when they might improve them.
There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any,
because they are, as they say, doing their duty I also have in my mind that seemingly
wealthy, but most terribly impoverished
class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of
it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it
would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual
history; it would certainly astonish those
who know nothing about it I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have
cherished
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the
nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities,
the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.
You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most
men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature.
I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my
gate
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail
Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks
and what calls they answered to.
I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the *** of the horse, and even
seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as
if they had lost them themselves.
To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself!
How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about
his business, have I been about mine!
No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers
starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work It is
true, I never assisted the sun materially
in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at
it
So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was
in the wind, to hear and carry it express!
I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain,
running in the face of it If it had concerned either of the political parties,
depend upon it, it would have appeared in
the Gazette with the earliest intelligence At other times watching from the
observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival; or waiting at
evening on the hill-tops for the sky to
fall, that I might catch something, though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise,
would dissolve again in the sun
For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose
editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too
common with writers, I got only my labor
for my pains However, in this case my pains were their own reward.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms,
and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and
all across-lot routes, keeping them open,
and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had
testified to their utility
I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful herdsman a good
deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks
and corners of the farm; though I did not
always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none
of my business.
I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red
pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have
withered else in dry seasons
In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully
minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not
after all admit me into the list of town
officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance.
My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got
audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled.
However, I have not set my heart on that.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known
lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked
"No, we do not want any," was the reply.
"What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?"
Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off--that the lawyer had only to
weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed--he had said to
himself: I will go into business; I will
weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do.
Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it
would be the white man's to buy them He had not discovered that it was necessary
for him to make it worth the other's while
to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else
which it would be worth his while to buy I too had woven a kind of basket of a
delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them.
Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and
instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied
rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind.
Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the court
house, or any curacy or living anywhere else, but I must shift for myself, I turned
my face more exclusively than ever to the
woods, where I was better known I determined to go into business at once, and
not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slender means as I had already
got My purpose in going to Walden Pond was
not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private
business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing which for want
of a little common sense, a little
enterprise and business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish
I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to
every man If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting
house on the coast, in some Salem harbor,
will be fixture enough You will export such articles as the country affords,
purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in
native bottoms These will be good ventures.
To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain,
and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter
received, and write or read every letter
sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many
parts of the coast almost at the same time- -often the richest freight will be
discharged upon a Jersey shore;--to be your
own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound
coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a
distant and exorbitant market; to keep
yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace
everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization--taking advantage
of the results of all exploring
expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation;--charts to be
studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and
ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to
be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a
rock that should have reached a friendly pier--there is the untold fate of La
Prouse;--universal science to be kept pace
with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great
adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine,
account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand.
It is a labor to task the faculties of a man--such problems of profit and loss, of
interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal
knowledge.
I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not solely on
account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be
good policy to divulge; it is a good port
and a good foundation No Neva marshes to be filled; though you must everywhere build
on piles of your own driving.
It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the Neva, would
sweep St. Petersburg from the face of the earth.
As this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it may not be
easy to conjecture where those means, that will still be indispensable to every such
undertaking, were to be obtained.
As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we
are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in
procuring it, than by a true utility.
Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain
the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may
judge how much of any necessary or
important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe.
Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to
their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits.
They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on.
Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the
impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such
delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies.
No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his
clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have
fashionable, or at least clean and
unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience But even if the rent is not
mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence.
I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this--Who could wear a patch, or
two extra seams only, over the knee?
Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they
should do it.
It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken
pantaloon.
Often if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended; but
if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it;
for he considers, not what is truly
respectable, but what is respected We know but few men, a great many coats and
breeches.
Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not
soonest salute the scarecrow?
Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the
owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten
than when I saw him last.
I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master's
premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief.
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they
were divested of their clothes.
Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged
to the most respected class?
When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west,
had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing
other than a travelling dress, when she
went to meet the authorities, for she "was now in a civilized country, where people
are judged of by their clothes."
Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and
its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost
universal respect.
But they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to
have a missionary sent to them Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work
which you may call endless; a woman's dress, at least, is never done.
A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it
in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate
period.
Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet--if a hero ever
has a valet--bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do.
Only they who go to soirees and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change
as often as the man changes in them.
But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will
do; will they not?
Who ever saw his old clothes--his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its
primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor
boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on
some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less?
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new
wearer of clothes If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to
fit?
If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes.
All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be
Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we
have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed
in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be
like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the
fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.
The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it.
Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an
internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and
mortal coil Otherwise we shall be found
sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own
opinion, as well as that of mankind
We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by addition without
Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis, or false skin,
which partakes not of our life, and may be
stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker garments, constantly
worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber, or
true bark, which cannot be removed without
girdling and so destroying the man I believe that all races at some seasons wear
something equivalent to the shirt.
It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself
in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that,
if an enemy take the town, he can, like the
old philosopher, walk out the gate empty- handed without anxiety While one thick
garment is, for most purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be
obtained at prices really to suit
customers; while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last as many
years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a
pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a
dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home
at a nominal cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of his own
earning, there will not be found wise men to do him reverence?
When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, "They
do not make them so now," not emphasizing the "They" at all, as if she quoted an
authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I
find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I
mean what I say, that I am so rash.
When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought,
emphasizing to myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it, that
I may find out by what degree of
consanguinity They are related to me, and what authority they may have in an affair
which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal
mystery, and without any more emphasis of
the "they"--"It is true, they did not make them so recently, but they do now."
Of what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the
breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to *** the coat on?
We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion.
She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority The head monkey at Paris puts on
a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.
I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world
by the help of men.
They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old
notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then
there would be some one in the company with
a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not
even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor Nevertheless, we will
not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy
On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in this or any
country risen to the dignity of an art.
At present men make shift to wear what they can get.
Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little
distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other's masquerade.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as
if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands.
All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque.
It is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it which
restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people.
Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve
that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannonball,
rags are as becoming as purple.
The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many
shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular
figure which this generation requires today.
The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical.
Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color,
the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens
that after the lapse of a season the latter
becomes the most fashionable Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous
custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the
printing is skin-deep and unalterable.
I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get
clothing The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the
English; and it cannot be wondered at,
since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind
may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be
enriched In the long run men hit only what
they aim at Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at
something high
As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there
are instances of men having done without it for long periods in colder countries than
this.
Samuel Laing says that "the Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he
puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow... in a
degree of cold which would extinguish the
life of one exposed to it in any woollen clothing" He had seen them asleep thus.
Yet he adds, "They are not hardier than other people."
But, probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the convenience
which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally
signified the satisfactions of the house
more than of the family; though these must be extremely partial and occasional in
those climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or
the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of
the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary In our climate, in the summer,
it was formerly almost solely a covering at night In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was
the symbol of a day's march, and a row of
them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that so many times they had
camped.
Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world
and wall in a space such as fitted him.
He was at first bare and out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene
and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of
the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped
his race in the bud if he had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of
a house. Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore
the bower before other clothes.
Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of warmth, then the warmth
of the affections
We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising mortal
crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter.
Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay outdoors, even in
wet and cold.
It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it Who does not remember the
interest with which, when young, he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a
cave?
It was the natural yearning of that portion, any portion of our most primitive
ancestor which still survived in us.
From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen
woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles.
At last, we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in
more senses than we think.
From the hearth the field is a great distance It would be well, perhaps, if we
were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the
celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak
so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long Birds do not sing in
caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
However, if one designs to construct a dwelling-house, it behooves him to exercise
a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth
without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead.
Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary.
I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth,
while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would
be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind.
Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper
pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for
unfortunately I am become somewhat callous,
I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the
laborers locked up their tools at night; and it suggested to me that every man who
was hard pushed might get such a one for a
dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into
it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his
love, and in his soul be free This did not
appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative You could sit up as
late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or
house-lord *** you for rent Many a man
is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not
have frozen to death in such a box as this I am far from jesting Economy is a subject
which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.
A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was
once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to
their hands Gookin, who was superintendent
of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, "The best of
their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from
their bodies at those seasons when the sap
is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are
green The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush,
and are also indifferently tight and warm,
but not so good as the former Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and
thirty feet broad.
I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English
houses."
He adds that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought
embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils.
The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat
suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string.
Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and
taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in
one.