Walden Part 1: Economy, Chapter 2
As described in recent posts, I’m creating a new adaptation of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. After months of editing and research, I’m excited to finally share the first several chapters with you. The following is chapter two of part one, and includes edits by myself and Billy Merrell, my co-editor. For more about this project and the forthcoming Kickstarter campaign, read this post. If you’re just now jumping in, you’ll find chapter one here.
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2. A Good Place for Business
To tell how I have spent my life in the past might seem astonishing to some of you. I will only hint at some of the endeavors I’ve enjoyed.
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 at the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment. To toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, since there are more secrets in my profession than in most. They are 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. I’ve questioned many travelers about them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. One or two had heard the hound, and the tramp 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 just the sunrise and the dawn, but, if possible, nature herself! On many mornings throughout the year, before any neighbor was stirring about their business, I have 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. I never assisted the sun materially in its rising, but it was of the utmost importance merely to be present for it.
I spent many autumn and winter days outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it back posthaste. I sunk nearly 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, you can believe me when I say that it would have appeared in the newspaper’s early edition. At other times I watched from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to make note of any new arrival. I waited at evening on hilltops for the sky to fall, in the hope that I might catch something; but I never caught much, and that, like manna, would dissolve again in the sun.
For a long time I was a reporter to a journal of small circulation, whose editor has not yet seen fit to publish the bulk of my contributions. 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 snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully. I was the surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all cross-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. I’ve had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farms, though I didn’t always know which laborer worked in a particular field today. That was none of my business. I’ve 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 otherwise withered in dry seasons.
In short, I continued in this way for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my fellow citizens would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my position a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, were never inspected, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. But I have not set my heart on that.
Not long ago, an Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer. “Do you wish to buy any baskets?” he asked. “No, we don’t 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. This is a thing 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 the baskets, or at least make him think that it was, or to make something else entirely which would pique the buyer’s interest. I too had woven a kind of delicately textured basket, but had not made it worth anyone’s while to buy them. Yet in my case, I did not considered my time to have been wasted, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which people praise and regard as successful is only one kind. Why should we exaggerate any kind of success at the expense of others?
I found that I must shift for myself. My fellow citizens were unlikely to offer me any room in the courthouse, or a living anywhere else. 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 the slender means I already possessed. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live uncomfortably there, but to conduct some private business with the fewest obstacles. To be hindered from accomplishing this for lack of a little common sense, a little enterprise and business talent, didn’t appear sad as much as foolish.
I’ve always tried to develop strict business habits. They are indispensable to everyone. If your trade is with China, then some small accounting office on the coast will suit your needs. You will export such goods as the country affords. These will be purely native products such as ice, pine timber, or granite. These would be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, 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 active on many parts of the coast simultaneously. To be your own telegraph, tirelessly sweeping the horizon, speaking with all passing vessels bound coastwise. To keep up a steady dispatch of goods, for the supply of distant markets. To keep yourself informed of economies, prospects of war and peace, 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 always 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. Universal science to be followed, studying the lives of great discoverers, navigators, adventurers, and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to the present day. Account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to test the faculties of a man — such problems of profit and loss, interest, tax and weight, and the gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge.
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I’ve thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, and not only 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, a good foundation. There are no marshes to be filled, though you must build on piles of your own driving.
As this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it may not be easy to guess where those means were to be obtained. To come at once to the practical part of the question: when it comes to clothing, perhaps we are led more often by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of people than by a true concern for utility. Let the one who has work to do remember that the object of clothing is first to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this particular society, to cover nakedness. He may then judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit only once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to fit 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 impression of the wearer’s character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such delay, medical appliances, and solemnity as our bodies. No one ever stood lower in my estimation for having a patch in their clothes. Yet I am sure there is often greater anxiety to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the tear is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is wastefulness. I sometimes test acquaintances by asking whether they could wear a patch over one knee. Most behave as if they believed their prospects for life would be ruined if they were to do it. It would be easier for them to hobble along the street in broad daylight with a broken leg than with a broken pant leg. If an accident happens to a person’s legs, they can often be mended. But if a similar accident happens to the legs of their pants, there is no help for it. We consider not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know few people, but a great many shirts and dresses.
Dress a scarecrow in your last shirt and stand shiftless nearby. Who wouldn’t sooner salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the other day, I saw a hat and coat on a stake, and recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than the last time I saw him. I’ve heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master’s property with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. Here is an interesting question: how far we would retain our relative rank if we were divested of our clothes? Could you, in such a case, tell from a group of civilized people which belonged to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels around the world, had come so near home as Asiatic Russia, she reported feeling the necessity to wear something better than a traveling dress when meeting local authorities, for she “was now in a civilized country, where … people are judged by their clothes.” Even in supposedly democratic American towns, the accidental possession of wealth and its manifestation as fashion provide almost universal respect for the wearer. But they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are heathen to this day, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which seems endless. A woman’s dress, at least, is never done.
A person who has finally found something to do may not need to get new clothes to do it in. In most circumstances, the old outfit will do. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet — if a hero even has a valet. Bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only those who frequent soirées and legislative balls must have new coats and dresses, to change as often as the person changes in them. But if my clothes are good enough to worship God in, will they not do everywhere else? Whoever saw their old coat completely worn out, nearly reduced to its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to give it to some poor child, by him perhaps to be given to someone poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? Beware of endeavors that require new clothes, rather than a new wearer of clothes. If there isn’t a new person, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any work to do, try it in your old clothes. People don’t want something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never buy a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have changed so much that we feel like new people in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our molting season, like that of birds, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retreats to solitary ponds to spend it. The snake also sheds its skin, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by internal movement and expansion. Clothes are merely our outermost layer and mortal coil. Otherwise we will be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably dismissed at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.
We wear garment after garment, as if growing like exogenous plants by addition from without. Our outer and often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which plays no part in our lives, 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 true bark, which cannot be removed without exposing and so destroying the person. I believe that all people, in at least one or two seasons, wear something like the shirt. It is good to be dressed so simply that you can lay your hands on yourself in the dark, and that you live in every way so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy invades, you can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.
One thick garment is generally as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices to suit any customer. A thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, thick pants for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half, a summer hat for twenty five cents, and a winter cap for sixty two cents, or made at home at a nominal cost. A man clad in such clothes of his own earning will surely find wise people to honor him.
When I order clothing of a particular kind, my tailor tells me gravely, “They don’t make them that way now,” not emphasizing the “They” at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates. I find it difficult to get what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say. When I hear this response, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately in order to discover the meaning of it, find out how They are related to me, and discover what authority they have in a matter which affects me so directly. 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 like this recently, but they do now.” What is the point of taking my measurements if she doesn’t measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as if they were pegs to hang the coat on? We don’t worship the Graces or the Fates, but Fashion. The tailor spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey in Paris puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple done in this world by the help of other people. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old ideas out of them. And then there would be someone in the group with a maggot in their 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, it is helpful to remember that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.
On the whole, I think it cannot be said that dressing has risen to the dignity of an art. Many make do with what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, we put on what we 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 styles, but follows religiously the new. We are as amused by the royal costumes of Elizabethan England as those of tribal chieftains in Borneo. All costume off a person is pitiful or grotesque. Only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it restrain laughter and consecrate the clothing of any people. Let Harlequin be overcome by a fit of 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 people for new styles keeps many squirming and squinting through kaleidoscopes so that they may discover the particular look which the current authorities require. Manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. From two patterns which differ only by a few threads, one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it often happens that after the passage of a season the latter becomes more fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is neither hideous nor barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.
I cannot believe that our factory system is the best way to get clothing. 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 people only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though they might fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.
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As for shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances of people 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 witnessed them sleeping in this state. Yet he adds, “They are not hardier than other people.” But people did not live long on the earth before discovering the convenience of living in a house, i.e. the domestic comforts, a phrase which may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family. These are merely partial and occasional in climates where the house is mainly associated with winter or the rainy season, and shelter is unnecessary for two thirds of the year, except for an umbrella for shade from the sun. In temperate zones, in the summer, shelter was once nothing more than a covering at night. To the Native American, 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 they had camped so many times. Mankind was not made so large limbed and robust that we must seek to narrow our world and wall in a space that barely fits us. At first, we were bare and out of doors. Although this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped us in the bud if we had not hurried to clothe ourselves with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according to the story, wore the bower before clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth or comfort — first of warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
We might imagine a prehistoric moment when some enterprising person crept for the first time 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. They play house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who doesn’t remember the interest with which, when young, he looked at shelving rocks, or the approach to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that portion of our earliest ancestors which still survived in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, to bark and boughs, linen woven and stretched, grass and straw, boards and shingles, stones and tiles. Nowadays, we have no idea what it’s like to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more ways than we think. From the kitchen, the woods are a great distance. It might be good to spend more days and nights without any barrier between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint live there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
However, if you want to build a house, it’s wise to exercise a little shrewdness, so that you don’t find yourself in a sweatshop, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum. Consider first how small a shelter is absolutely necessary. I’ve seen Penobscot Indians 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. The question of how to make an honest living yet maintain freedom for my truest pursuits once troubled me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I have become somewhat callous. I used to see a box by the railroad, six feet by three, in which laborers locked up their tools at night. At the time, it suggested to me that every man of slender means might get such a box for a nominal cost. Having augured a few holes in it to admit some air, he could get into it when it rained and at night, and close the lid. With such shelter, he would have freedom in his love, and in his soul would 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 a landlord dogging you for rent. Many a person 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 bears being treated with levity, but levity cannot dispose of it.
A comfortable house, for a hardy people that lived mostly outside, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as were readily found furnished by nature. Daniel Gookin, who was superintendent of the Native Americans subject to the Massachusetts Colony, wrote in 1674, “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 often carpeted and lined within with well-made 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 initially constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours. Every family owned one, or had its apartment in one.
In primitive societies every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its simpler wants. But I think I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the primitive people their wigwams, in modern civilized society no more than one half of all families own a shelter. In large cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay a tax for this outside garment of all, which would buy a village of wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of renting compared with owning. But it is evident that the primitive man owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man often rents his because he can’t afford to own it. Nor can he afford to rent in the long run. You might argue that by merely paying this tax, the poor civilized man secures a home which is a palace compared with the primitive’s. The cost of rent entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious rooms, clean paint, efficient heating, Venetian blinds, reliable plumbing, secure locks, a dry basement, and many other things. But how is it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so often a poor civilized man, while the primitive, who lacks them, is rich as a primitive? If it can be asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of humanity — and I think it is, though only the wise improve their advantages — it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly. And the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. To buy an average house in Concord today will require ten to fifteen years of a full-time worker’s life and income, even if he is not encumbered with a family, so that he might have spent more than half his life before his wigwam will be earned. If we suppose he will pay rent instead, this is merely a doubtful choice of evils. Would the primitive person have been wise to exchange their wigwam for a palace on these terms?
You might suppose that I’ve nearly reduced the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps we are not required to bury ourselves. Nevertheless this points to an important distinction between the civilized person and the primitive; and, no doubt, they have plans for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I want to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is obtained, and to suggest that we may live in such a way that secures all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage.
“What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’? As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.”
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When I consider the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, so that they may become the real owners of their farms, which they have often inherited with burdens, or else bought with someone else’s money. We may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses; but typically, they have not paid for them yet. It’s true, the burdens sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great burden, and still a man inherits it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On contacting the assessors, I’m surprised to learn that they cannot name a dozen people in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you want to know the history of these homesteads, ask at the bank where they are mortgaged. The person who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to them. I doubt if there are three such people in Concord. What has been said of entrepreneurs — that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of farmers. With regard to entrepreneurs, however, one of them says that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfill their engagements, because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and suggests that not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perhaps bankrupt in a worse sense than those who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization jumps and turns its somersaults, but the primitive stands on the unyielding plank of famine. Yet here in New England, our local cattle shows go off here with éclat annually, as if all parts of the agricultural machine were in perfect working order.
The farmer is working to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings, he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skill, he has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg caught in it. This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand crude comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman says,
“The false society of men —
— for earthly greatness
All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.”
And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be richer but poorer for it, and it is the house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Athena made, that she “had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided”; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them. The bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the town, but have been unable to accomplish it. Only death will set them free.
Granted, the majority are able at last either to own or rent the modern house with all its amenities. While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the people who inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it hasn’t been so easy to create a new nobility. If the civilized man’s pursuits are no worthier than the primitive’s, if he spends the greater part of his life in obtaining basic necessaries and comforts, why should he have a better house?
But how do the poor fare? Perhaps we may find that as some have been placed in outward circumstances above the primitive, others have been degraded below him. The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and “silent poor.” The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it’s likely that few were decently buried. The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night to a lesser hut than a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidence of civilization exists, the condition of a great many inhabitants may not be as bad as that of primitive tribes in the remote corners of our world. I refer to the degraded poor, not to the degraded rich. To know this I don’t need to look farther than the shanties which border our railroads, that latest improvement in civilization. Here I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood pile. The bodies of young and old alike are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Contrast the physical condition of today’s working-class Irish with that of the Native American, or the Papua New Guinean, or any other primitive society before it was degraded by contact with civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that primitive rulers are as wise as average civilized rulers. The condition of civilized working classes only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer now to the slaves in our Southern states who produce the staple exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production of the South. But to confine myself to those who are said to live in moderate circumstances.
It appears that most people have never considered what a house is, and are actually yet needlessly poor all their lives because they think they must have a house like that of their neighbors. As if a person were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might make for him, or, eventually ridding himself of palm-leaf hat or fur cap, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy a crown! It is possible to invent houses that are more convenient and luxurious than the ones we have, though few of us could afford to pay for them. Must we forever strive to obtain more things, and not to be content with less? Must the respectable citizen teach, by precept and example, that it is necessary for a working homeowner or renter to provide a certain number of extra galoshes, umbrellas, and empty guest rooms for empty guests, before he dies? Why shouldn’t our furniture be as simple as the Arabian nomad’s? When I think of the benefactors of humanity, whom we have elevated as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, or any carload of fashionable furniture. Or what if our furniture should be more complex than the nomad’s, but only to the degree that we are his moral and intellectual superiors! These days, our houses are cluttered and defiled with furnishings and fixtures, and a good housekeeper would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave their morning’s work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be our morning work in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required daily dusting, when the furniture of my mind was still undusted. I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, except where man has broken ground.
Overindulgent people set the fashions which the herd so diligently follows. When traveling by rail, we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience, and our means of transportation threatens without attaining these to become no better than a modern living room, with its divans, ottomans, sun shades, and a hundred other things we’ve come to expect as entitlements in modern travel. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, breathing free air, than go to heaven in a luxurious train and breathe malaria all the way.
The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages imply this advantage: at the end, he remained a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed by food and sleep, he considered his journey again. He dwelt, so to speak, in a tent in this world. He was either threading valleys, crossing plains, or climbing mountaintops. But people have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked fruit when he was hungry has now become a farmer. He who stood under a tree for shelter is now a housekeeper. We no longer camp for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have built a family mansion for this world, and a family tomb for the next. The best works of art are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make our low state comfortable, and the higher state forgotten. There is actually no place in this town for a work of fine art — if any had come down to us — to stand. Our lives, houses, and streets furnish no proper pedestal for it. There isn’t a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint.
When I consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and how their internal economy is managed and sustained, I’m amazed that the floor does not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the knickknacks upon the mantelpiece, and let him fall through to the basement, to some solid and honest though earthy foundation. This so-called rich and refined life is a thing we jump to reach, and we cannot enjoy the fine arts which adorn it, our attention being wholly occupied with the jump. I remember that the greatest genuine leap on record, due to human muscles alone, is that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. Without artificial support, man is sure to come to earth again beyond that distance.
The first question I wish to ask the proprietor of such great impropriety is, who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail, or the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, and then perhaps I may look at your baubles and find them ornamental. The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects, the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped. Beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living can then be laid for a foundation. A taste for beauty is best cultivated outdoors, where there is no house and no housekeeper.
In Wonder-Working Providence, Edward Johnson speaks of the first settlers of Concord: “they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire against the earth, at the highest side.” They did not “provide them houses,” says he, “till the earth, by the Lord’s blessing, brought forth bread to feed them,” and the first year’s crop was so light that “they were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season.” The secretary of the Province of New Netherland, writing in Dutch, in 1650, for the information of those who wished to buy land there, states more specifically that “those in New Netherland, and especially in New England, who have no means to build farmhouses at first according to their wishes, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire families for two, three, and four years, it being understood that partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the size of the family. The wealthy and principal men in New England, in the beginning of the colonies, commenced their first dwelling-houses in this fashion for two reasons: firstly, in order not to waste time in building, and not to want food the next season; secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring people whom they brought over in numbers from Fatherland. In the course of three or four years, when the country became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves handsome houses, spending on them several thousands.”
In the path which our ancestors took there was at least a show of prudence, as if their goal was to satisfy the more pressing desires first. But are the more pressing desires satisfied now? When I think of buying one of our luxurious dwellings for myself, I am repulsed. The country is not yet adapted to human culture, so to speak, and we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers cut their wheat bread. Not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even in the crudest periods. But let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they come in contact with our lives, like the house of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. Unfortunately, I have been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined with.
Though we are not so degenerate that we couldn’t possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it is better to accept the advantages, though dearly bought, which the advances and industry of mankind offer. In Concord, boards, shingles, mortar, and bricks are cheaper and more easily obtained than suitable caves, whole logs, bark in sufficient quantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speak from knowledge on this subject, as I have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically and practically. With a little more wit we might use these materials to become richer than the richest among us, and make our civilization a blessing. The civilized person is merely a more experienced savage. But now let us turn to my own experiment.
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