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When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of thehbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earnedby the labor of my hands only I lived there two years and two ain

I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not beenh they do not appear tothe circuot to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like Others have been curious to learn what portion of my incoe families, how many poor children I maintained I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book In most books, the I, or first person, is ootism, is the main difference We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I kneell Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it es are more particularly addressed to poor students As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to the on the coat, for it ood service to him who, not sothe Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England; so about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this tohat it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be iood deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared topenance in a thousand re exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads doard, over fla at the heavens over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while fro but liquids can pass into the sto, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; orwith their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast e on the tops of pillars -- even these forms of conscious penance are hardlythan the scenes which I daily witness The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in cohbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra’s head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited far tools; for these are ot rid of Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they ht have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condeing their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a et on as well as they can How h crushed and s down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, le with no such unnecessary inherited encuh to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh

But men labor under a mistake The better part of thefate, commonly called necessity, they are e up treasures which h and steal It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha createdstones over their heads behind theenus durum sumus, experiensque laboruine nati

Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,--

"Fro pain and care, Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are"

Sothe stones over their heads behind the where they fell

Most norance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by theers, from excessive toil, are too clu rity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in thebut a rowth requires -- who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe hiratuitously soe of him The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by theYet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly

Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are so for breath I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have co your creditors of an hour It is very evident what ht has been whetted by experience; always on the liet out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another’s brass, for so, and buried by this other’s brass; always pro today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custo, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atenerosity, that you hbor to let you e, or i yourselves sick, that youto be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little

I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I n forro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself Talk of a divinity into ht; does any divinity stir within hihest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to hi interests? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how iuely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and i that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill ti eternity

The mass of nation is confiro into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind There is no play in them, for this comes after work But it is a characteristic of wisdos

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as ifbecause they preferred it to any other Yet they honestly think there is no choice left But alert and healthy natures reive up our prejudices No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which so rain on their fields What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost Oneof absolute value by living Practically, the old have no very i, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice fro, and probably cannot tell reat extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it If I have any experience which I think valuable, I a about

One faretable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to iously devotes a part of his day to supplying his syste all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable- in spite of every obstacle Sos are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown

The whole ground of huone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for According to Evelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Rohbor’s land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor" Hippocrates has even left directions hoe should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam But man’s capacities have never been e of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, n to thee what thou hast left undone?"

We ht try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours If I had remembered this it would have prevented soht in which I hoed theles! What distant and different beings in the variousthe same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater h each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages History, Poetry, Mythology! -- I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and inforreater part of what ood I believe in , it is very likely to be ood behavior What demon possessedyou can, old man -- you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind -- I hear an irresistible voice which invites eneration abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels

I think that we ood deal more than we do We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength The incessant anxiety and strain of soh incurable forerate the importance of e do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night illingly say our prayers and cohly and sincerely are we co the possibility of change This is the only e say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii froe is aplace every instant Confucius said, "To know that we knoe know, and that we do not knoe do not know, that is true knowledge" When one ination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all th establish their lives on that basis

Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or at least careful It would be soh in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the ht at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries For the ies have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors

By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been fro use has become, so ieness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it To many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, ater to drink; unless he seeks the Shelter of the forest or the mountain’s shadow None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter The necessaries of life for h, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it We observe cats and dogs acquiring the saitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, in? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, ell clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far froes, ere farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, "to be strea" So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes Is it ies with the intellectualness of the civilized , man’s body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal cos In cold weather we eat more, in warm less The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or frooes out Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so y It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, aniarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us -- and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition fro also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed

The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warly take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the rass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally isand Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc, and for the studious, laht, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost Yet solobe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live -- that is, keep coland at last The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course a la mode

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 core 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 iround of e 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 hts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdo to its dictates, a life of sinanimity, 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 coly, 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 enerate 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 er and , 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 fro commenced The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle doard, 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 froround, and are not treated like the huh they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so thatseason

I do notand valiant natures, ill mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build nificently and spendthe how they live -- if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreaement 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 knohether they are well employed or not; -- but mainly to theof the hardness of their lot or of the tiht ietically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty I also have in ly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accuet 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 ti 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 froladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint "No Ado lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning the their tracks and what calls they answered to I have met one or tho 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 the sunrise and the dawn s, su about his business, have I been aboutfroht, or woodchoppers going to their work It is true, I never assisted the sun , but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it

So many autu to hear as in the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all ain, 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 ti froraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that I ht ain 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 ot only my labor for my pains However, in this case my pains were their oard

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storhways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping theed and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility

I have looked after the wild stock of the tohich give a faithful herds fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farh I did not always knohether 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 ht have withered else in dry seasons

In short, I went on thus for a long ti 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 setsince, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-knoyer in hborhood "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked "No, we do not want any," was the reply "What!" exclaiate, "do you hbors so well off -- that the lawyer had only to weave argu followed -- he had said to hio into business; I eave 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 leastelse 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 worthhow to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling theard 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 offeranywhere else, but I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known I detero into business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slenderto 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 fro 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 E house on the coast, in soh You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, ranite, always in native bottoood 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 iht and day; to be upon many parts of the coast alht 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 iation; -- 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 kno you stand It is a labor to task the faculties of a man -- such probleing of all kinds in it, as deht 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 ood foundation No Neva h youIt 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 ofit, than by a true utility Let hi is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he e how much of any necessary or i to his wardrobe Kings and queens ear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dress a suit that fits They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on Every day our gar 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 Noa patch in his clothes; yet I areater 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 the than with a broken pantaloon Often if an accident happens to a gentles, they can be s 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 reat many coats and breeches Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, ould 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 hier 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 coed to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, froot 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, wherepeople are judged of by their clothes" Even in our deland towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its e 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 , a kind of hich you may call endless; a woman’s dress, at least, is never done

A et a new suit to do it in; for hiarret for an indeterer than they have served his valet -- if a hero ever has a valet -- bare feet are older than shoes, and he can islative balls es 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 neearer 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 Allto do, or rather so 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 newneine in old bottles Ourseason, 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 andunder false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of arenous 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 garument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber, or true bark, which cannot be re theequivalent 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 earood as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit custoht 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 hiarravely, "They do notthe "They" at all, as if she quoted an authority as iet 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 a toof it, that I uinity 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 the of me if she does not measure my character, but only the breadth ofthe 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 theanything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of h a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of theain; and then there would be soot in his head, hatched fro deposited there nobody knohen, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor Nevertheless, ill not forget that soyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy

On the whole, I think that it cannot behas in this or any country risen to the dignity of an art At present et Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or tieneration laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new We are a the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, asand Queen of the Cannibal Islands All costurotesque It is only the serious eye peering frohter 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 s are as becoe taste ofand squinting through kaleidoscopes that they eneration 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 beco is not the hideous custom which it is called It is not barbarousis skin-deep and unalterable

I cannot believe that our factory syste The condition of the operatives is becolish; 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 corporationsrun h they should fail ih

As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances ofperiods in colder countries than this Sa 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 snowin 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,the convenience which there is in a house, the donified the satisfactions of the house h these must be extremely partial and occasional in those clihts inter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary In our cli at night In the Indian gazettes a as the symbol of a day’s march, and a row of thenified that so e limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a space such as fitted hih this was pleasant enough in serene and eather, 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 hi to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of warmth, then the warine a ti 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 re, 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 palhs, 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 reat distance It would be well, perhaps, if ere to spend hts without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak soBirds 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 ht a shelter is absolutely necessary I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snoas nearly a foot deep around thelad to have it deeper to keep out the wind For honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I ae box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night; and it suggested to et such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to adht, 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 dogging you for rent Many a er and more luxurious box ould not have frozen to death in such a box as this I a 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, as 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 hty tireen The meaner sort are covered with mats which they ht and warood as the for and thirty feet broad I have often lodged in their alish houses" He adds that they were coht embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by aSuch 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 aparte state every faood as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their ams, in modern civilized society not e towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those n a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, becoe of Indian a as they live I do notcoe owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire But, answers one, bythis tax, the poor civilized e’s An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars (these are the country rates) entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Ru, Venetian blinds, copper pus But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so coe, who has thee? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of h only the wise ies -- it s withoutis the aed for it, ihborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer’s life, even if he is not encu the pecuniary value of every man’s labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less; -- so that he must have spent ill be earned If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils Would the savage have been wise to exchange his am for a palace on these teruessed that I reduce al this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned,of funeral expenses But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself Nevertheless this points to an ie; and, no doubt, they have designs on us for our benefit, inthe 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 wish to shohat a sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we e without suffering any of the disadvantage Whatthat the poor ye have alith you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?

"As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel

"Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die"

When I consider hbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that for thetwenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which coht with hired ard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses -- but commonly they have not paid for theh the value of the farreat encu well acquainted with it, as he says On applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the ton their farms free and clear If you would know the history of these hoed The man who has actually paid for his farhbor can point to him I doubt if there are three such men in Concord What has been said of the e majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farard to the reat part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but ements, because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down But this puts an infinitely worse face on the ests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its soe stands on the unelastic plank of faoes off here with eclat annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were suent

The far to solve the problem of a livelihood by a foret his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle With consu to catch coot his own leg into it This is the reason he is poor; and for a sie cos,

"The false society of reatness

All heavenly comforts rarefies to air"

And when the farot his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got hied by Moainst the house which Minerva made, that she "had not ht be avoided"; and it ed, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often ihborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves I know one or two faeneration, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and e, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free

Granted that the majority are able at last either to own or hire the modern house with all its i our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create nobles And if the civilized e’s, if he is eross necessaries and co than the former?

But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found that just in proportion as soe, others have been degraded below hience of another On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and "silent poor" The myriads who built the pyraarlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves The ht perchance to a hut not so good as a am It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants raded poor, not now to the degraded rich To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see inin sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often i are per 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 accoreater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denoreat workhouse of the world Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is htened spots on the map Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North Ae race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized man Yet I have no doubt that that people’s rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization I hardly need refer now to the laborers 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 be in moderate circumstances

Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they hbors have As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailoroff palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown! It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for Shall ays study to obtain s, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and exa a certain nuuest chauests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab’s or the Indian’s? When I think of the benefactors of the race, e have apotheosized as ifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any carload of fashionable furniture Or what if I were to alloould it not be a singular allowance? -- that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab’s, in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good houseould sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave herwork! By the blushes of Aurora and thework in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw theust How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where round

It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow The traveller who stops at the best houses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presuned himself to their tender mercies he would soon be completely emasculated I think that in the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these to beco-room, with its divans, and ottos, which we are taking ith us, invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names of 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, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way

The very sies ie, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature When he was refreshed with food and sleep, he conteain He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or cli the mountain-tops But lo! men have become the tools of their tools The ry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper We now no longer caotten heaven We have adopted Christianity ri-culture We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb The best works of art are the expression of le to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is her state to be forgotten There is actually no place in this village for a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it There is not 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 their internal econoive way under the visitor while he is adh into the cellar, to soh earthy foundation I cannot but perceive that this so-called rich and refined life is a thing juet on in the enjoy wholly occupied with the juenuine leap, due to hu Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level ground Without factitious support, ain beyond that distance The first question which I areat 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 bawbles 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 livesand beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper

Old Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," speaking of the first settlers of this tohom he was contemporary, tells us that "they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under so the soil aloft upon tihest side" They did not "provide them houses," says he, "till the earth, by the Lord’s blessing, brought forth bread to feed theht 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 ished to take up land there, states more particularly that "those in New Netherland, and especially in New England, who have noto 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 ood all round the wall, and line the ith the bark of trees or so 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 fa understood that partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the size of the fainning of the colonies, co-houses in this fashion for two reasons: firstly, in order not to waste ti, and not to want food the next season; secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring people whoht over in numbers from Fatherland In the course of three or four years, when the country becariculture, they built the on them several thousands"

In this course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy thewants satisfied now? When I think of acquiring for s, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten Not that all architectural ornalected even in the rudest periods; but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they come in contact with our lives, like the tenement of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it But, alas! I have been inside one or two of them, and knohat they are lined with

Though we are not so degenerate but that we wam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention and industry of hborhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and s, or bark in sufficient quantities, or even well-tely on this subject, for I have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically and practically With a little ht use these materials so as to become richer than the richest now are, andThe civilized e But to make haste to my own experiment

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build an to cut down some tall, arrohite pines, still in their youth, for ti, but perhaps it is the enerous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was all dark-colored and saturated ater There were so the days that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, onin the hazy at sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already co days, in which the winter ofas well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself One day, when e, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the botto as I stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing theher and more ethereal life I had previously seen the snakes in frosty s in my path with portions of their bodies still nu for the sun to thaw them On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog

So I went on for so timber, and also studs and rafters, all withto s;

But lo! they have taken wings --

The arts and sciences,

And a thousand appliances;

The wind that blows

Is all that any body knows

I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor ti the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and er than sawed ones Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this ti ones; yet I usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it rapped, at noon, sitting ahs which I had cut off, and to rance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat of pitch Before I had done I was h I had cut down so become better acquainted with it Sometimes a rambler in the as attracted by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which I had made

By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made theI had already bought the shanty of Ja Railroad, for boards James Collins’ shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one When I called to see it he was not at home I walked about the outside, at first unobserved froh It was of se roof, and notraised five feet all around as if it were a coood deal warped and made brittle by the sun Doorsill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens under the door board Mrs C came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside The hens were driven in by my approach It was dark, and had a dirt floor for the uish, only here a board and there a board which would not bear rehted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep In her oords, they were "good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good " -- of thole squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way lately There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-fralass, and a patent new coffee-ain was soon concluded, for James had in the meanwhile returned I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents tonight, he to vacate at five to to nobody else meanwhile: I to take possession at six It ell, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust clairound rent and fuel This he assured me was the only encumbrance At six I passed hie bundle held their all -- bed, coffee-lass, hens -- all but the cat; she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last

I took down this dwelling the sa the nails, and re the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun One early thrush gavethe woodland path I was inforhbor Seeley, an Irish, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the tihts, at the devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said He was there to represent spectatordonificant event one with the reto the south, where a woodchuck had forh suetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place It was but two hours’ work I took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in al into the earth for an equable temperature Under the most splendid house in the city is still to be found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow

At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of soood an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than I They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one day I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly i I laid the foundation of a chi two cartloads of stones up the hill fro in the fall, before a fire beca in the : which reeable than the usual one When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad

It would be worth the while to build still , for instance, what foundation a door, a , a cellar, a garret, have in the nature ofany superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even There is so his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest Who knows but if s with their own hands, and provided food for theh, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unn the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the ed in so si his house We belong to the community It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion offor myself

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea ofarchitectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantisan at the cornice, not at the foundation It was only how to put a core of truth within the ornaht have an alh I hold that alar -- and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, ht build truly within and without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves What reasonableoutward and in the skin ot his spotted shell, or the shell-fish its mother-o’-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with the style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard The enemy will find it out He may turn pale when the trial comes This man seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the rude occupants who really knew it better than he What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is the only builder -- out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life The s in this country, as the painter knows, are the es of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaceswill be the citizen’s suburban box, when his life shall be as siination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling A great proportion of architectural ornaale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their professors Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him or under hinify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted the departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin -- the architecture of the grave -- and "carpenter" is but another name for "coffin-maker" One man says, in his despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that color Is he thinking of his last and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well What an abundance of leisure be must have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you An enterprise to iot my ornaments ready, I ear them

Before winter I built a chiled the sides of my house, which were already iles ed to straighten with a plane

I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a largeon each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite The exact cost ofthe usual price for suchthe work, all of which was done by ive the details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials which compose them:--

Boards803+, les for roof sides400

Laths125

Two second-hand s

with glass243

One thousand old brick400

Two casks of lih

Hair031 More than I needed

Mantle-tree iron015

Nails390

Hinges and screws014

Latch010

Chalk001

Transportation140 I carried a good part

------- on my back

In all2812+

These are all thethe tiht I have also a s,the house

I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the randeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one

I thus found that the student ishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetireater than the rent which he now pays annually If I see for hus and inconsistencies do not affect the truth ofmuch cant and hypocrisy -- chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man -- I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical systeh humility becoood word for the truth At Cae the er than h the corporation had the advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of hbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story I cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would be needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired, but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish Those conveniences which the student requires at Careat a sacrifice of life as they would with proper s for which the s which the student most wants Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the terets by associating with the e is et up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme -- a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection -- to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are said to be fitting theenerations have to pay I think that it would be better than this, for the students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundation themselves The student who secures his coveted leisure and retire any labor necessary to noble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful "But," says one, "you do not o to ith their hands instead of their heads?" I do not ht think a good deal like that; I mean that they should not play life, or study it a to end How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experi? Methinks this would exercise their minds asabout the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the cohborhood of so is professed and practised but the art of life; -- to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the abond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by thethe ar Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month -- the boy who hadand s as much as would be necessary for this -- or the boy who had attended the lectures on y at the Institute in the ers’ penknife froers? To e that I had studied navigation! -- why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known ht only political econo which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably

As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about theoes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and nu investments in them Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention fros They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York We are in great haste to construct a raph fro important to communicate Either is in such a predicauished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear tru to say As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough After all, the man whose horse trots a es; he is not an evangelist, nor does he co Childers ever carried a peck of corn to mill

One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up o to Fitchburg today and see the country" But I am wiser than that I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot I say to et there first The distance is thirty es I rees were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there so, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your acquaintance altogether

Such is the universal lahich no ard to the railroad even weTo make a railroad round the world available to allthe whole surface of the planet Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride soh a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is bloay and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over -- and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy accident" No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that tithe least valuable part of it relishman ent to India to land and live the life of a poet He should have gone up garret at once "What!" exclai up from all the shanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have built a good thing?" Yes, I answer, coht have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers ofin this dirt

Before I finishedto earn ten or twelve dollars by soreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips The whole lot contains eleven acres,up to pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre One far squirrels on" I put nothe owner, but ain, and I did not quite hoe it all once I got out several cords of stu tiuishable through the sureater luxuriance of the beans there The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the reed to hire a teah I held the plow oes for the first season were, for iivento speak of, unless you plant hteen bushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn The yellow corn and turnips were too late to co My whole income from the farm was

2344

Deducting the outgoes1472+

-------

There are left871+

beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was made of the value of 450 -- the arass which I did not raise All things considered, that is, considering the i the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly even because of its transient character, I believe that that was doing better than any farmer in Concord did that year