construction maison contemporaine gard

chapter 2 - part 1where i lived, and what i lived for at a certain season of our life we areaccustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house.i have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where i live. in imagination i have bought all the farmsin succession, for all were to be bought, and i knew their price. i walked over each farmer's premises,tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at hisprice, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on it--

took everything but a deed of it--took hisword for his deed, for i dearly love to talk--cultivated it, and him too to someextent, i trust, and withdrew when i had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him tocarry it on. this experience entitled me to be regardedas a sort of real-estate broker by my friends. wherever i sat, there i might live, and thelandscape radiated from me accordingly. what is a house but a sedes, a seat?--better if a country seat. i discovered many a site for a house notlikely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from thevillage, but to my eyes the village was too

far from it. well, there i might live, i said; and therei did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how i could let the yearsrun off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. the future inhabitants of this region,wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. an afternoon sufficed to lay out the landinto orchard, wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should beleft to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best

advantage; and then i let it lie, fallow,perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can affordto let alone. my imagination carried me so far that ieven had the refusal of several farms--the refusal was all i wanted--but i never gotmy fingers burned by actual possession. the nearest that i came to actualpossession was when i bought the hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, andcollected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, hiswife--every man has such a wife--changed her mind and wished to keep it, and heoffered me ten dollars to release him.

now, to speak the truth, i had but tencents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if i was that man whohad ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. however, i let him keep the ten dollars andthe farm too, for i had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, i soldhim the farm for just what i gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had myten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left.i found thus that i had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty.

but i retained the landscape, and i havesince annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow.with respect to landscapes, "i am monarch of all i survey, my rightthere is none to dispute." i have frequently seen a poet withdraw,having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed thathe had got a few wild apples only. why, the owner does not know it for manyyears when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisiblefence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and leftthe farmer only the skimmed milk. the real attractions of the hollowell farm,to me, were: its complete retirement,

being, about two miles from the village,half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which theowner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that wasnothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such aninterval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees,gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors i should have; but above all, the recollection i had of it from my earliestvoyages up the river, when the house was

concealed behind a dense grove of redmaples, through which i heard the house-dog bark. i was in haste to buy it, before theproprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, andgrubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, hadmade any more of his improvements. to enjoy these advantages i was ready tocarry it on; like atlas, to take the world on my shoulders--i never heard whatcompensation he received for that--and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that i might pay for it andbe unmolested in my possession of it; for i

knew all the while that it would yield themost abundant crop of the kind i wanted, if i could only afford to let it alone. but it turned out as i have said.all that i could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale--i have alwayscultivated a garden--was, that i had had my seeds ready. many think that seeds improve with age.i have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when atlast i shall plant, i shall be less likely to be disappointed. but i would say to my fellows, once forall, as long as possible live free and

uncommitted.it makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail. old cato, whose "de re rustica" is my"cultivator," says--and the only translation i have seen makes sheernonsense of the passage--"when you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your painsto look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once.the oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good." i think i shall not buy greedily, but goround and round it as long as i live, and

be buried in it first, that it may pleaseme the more at last. the present was my next experiment of thiskind, which i purpose to describe more at length, for convenience putting theexperience of two years into one. as i have said, i do not propose to writean ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing onhis roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. when first i took up my abode in the woods,that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was onindependence day, or the fourth of july, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain,without plastering or chimney, the walls

being of rough, weather-stained boards,with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. the upright white hewn studs and freshlyplaned door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in themorning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that i fancied that by noonsome sweet gum would exude from them. to my imagination it retained throughoutthe day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain houseon a mountain which i had visited a year before. this was an airy and unplastered cabin, fitto entertain a travelling god, and where a

goddess might trail her garments. the winds which passed over my dwellingwere such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, orcelestial parts only, of terrestrial music. the morning wind forever blows, the poem ofcreation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it.olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere. the only house i had been the owner ofbefore, if i except a boat, was a tent, which i used occasionally when makingexcursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after

passing from hand to hand, has gone downthe stream of time. with this more substantial shelter aboutme, i had made some progress toward settling in the world. this frame, so slightly clad, was a sort ofcrystallization around me, and reacted on the builder.it was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. i did not need to go outdoors to take theair, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. it was not so much within doors as behind adoor where i sat, even in the rainiest

weather.the harivansa says, "an abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning." such was not my abode, for i found myselfsuddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having cagedmyself near them. i was not only nearer to some of thosewhich commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those smaller and morethrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager--the wood thrush, the veery, the scarlettanager, the field sparrow, the whip-poor- will, and many others.

i was seated by the shore of a small pond,about a mile and a half south of the village of concord and somewhat higher thanit, in the midst of an extensive wood between that town and lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only fieldknown to fame, concord battle ground; but i was so low in the woods that the oppositeshore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my most distanthorizon. for the first week, whenever i looked outon the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, itsbottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, i saw it

throwing off its nightly clothing of mist,and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surfacewas revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at thebreaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. the very dew seemed to hang upon the treeslater into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains. this small lake was of most value as aneighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain- storm in august, when, both air and waterbeing perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the

serenity of evening, and the wood thrushsang around, and was heard from shore to shore. a lake like this is never smoother than atsuch a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being, shallow and darkened byclouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itselfso much the more important. from a hill-top near by, where the wood hadbeen recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through awide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested astream flowing out in that direction

through a wooded valley, but stream therewas none. that way i looked between and over the neargreen hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. indeed, by standing on tiptoe i could catcha glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges inthe northwest, those true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, and also of some portionof the village. but in other directions, even from thispoint, i could not see over or beyond the woods which surrounded me. it is well to have some water in yourneighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float

the earth. one value even of the smallest well is,that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular.this is as important as that it keeps butter cool. when i looked across the pond from thispeak toward the sudbury meadows, which in time of flood i distinguished elevatedperhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like a thincrust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of interverting water, and iwas reminded that this on which i dwelt was

but dry land. though the view from my door was still morecontracted, i did not feel crowded or confined in the least.there was pasture enough for my imagination. the low shrub oak plateau to which theopposite shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the west and the steppes oftartary, affording ample room for all the roving families of men. "there are none happy in the world butbeings who enjoy freely a vast horizon"-- said damodara, when his herds required newand larger pastures.

both place and time were changed, and idwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had mostattracted me. where i lived was as far off as many aregion viewed nightly by astronomers. we are wont to imagine rare and delectableplaces in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind theconstellation of cassiopeia's chair, far from noise and disturbance. i discovered that my house actually had itssite in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. if it were worth the while to settle inthose parts near to the pleiades or the

hyades, to aldebaran or altair, then i wasreally there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which i had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a rayto my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him.such was that part of creation where i had squatted; "there was a shepherd that did live, andheld his thoughts as high as were the mounts whereon his flocks did hourly feedhim by." what should we think of the shepherd's lifeif his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?

every morning was a cheerful invitation tomake my life of equal simplicity, and i may say innocence, with nature herself.i have been as sincere a worshipper of aurora as the greeks. i got up early and bathed in the pond; thatwas a religious exercise, and one of the best things which i did. they say that characters were engraven onthe bathing tub of king tchingthang to this effect: "renew thyself completely each day;do it again, and again, and forever again." i can understand that. morning brings back the heroic ages.

i was as much affected by the faint hum ofa mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment atearliest dawn, when i was sitting with door and windows open, as i could be by anytrumpet that ever sang of fame. it was homer's requiem; itself an iliad andodyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. there was something cosmical about it; astanding advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of theworld. the morning, which is the most memorableseason of the day, is the awakening hour. then there is least somnolence in us; andfor an hour, at least, some part of us

awakes which slumbers all the rest of theday and night. little is to be expected of that day, if itcan be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our genius, but by themechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within,accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and afragrance filling the air--to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itselfto be good, no less than the light. that man who does not believe that each daycontains an earlier, more sacred, and

auroral hour than he has yet profaned, hasdespaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. after a partial cessation of his sensuouslife, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and hisgenius tries again what noble life it can make. all memorable events, i should say,transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere.the vedas say, "all intelligences awake with the morning." poetry and art, and the fairest and mostmemorable of the actions of men, date from

such an hour. all poets and heroes, like memnon, are thechildren of aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. to him whose elastic and vigorous thoughtkeeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.it matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. morning is when i am awake and there is adawn in me. moral reform is the effort to throw offsleep. why is it that men give so poor an accountof their day if they have not been

slumbering?they are not such poor calculators. if they had not been overcome withdrowsiness, they would have performed something. the millions are awake enough for physicallabor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion,only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. to be awake is to be alive.i have never yet met a man who was quite awake.how could i have looked him in the face? we must learn to reawaken and keepourselves awake, not by mechanical aids,

but by an infinite expectation of the dawn,which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. i know of no more encouraging fact than theunquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. it is something to be able to paint aparticular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; butit is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium throughwhich we look, which morally we can do. to affect the quality of the day, that isthe highest of arts. every man is tasked to make his life, evenin its details, worthy of the contemplation

of his most elevated and critical hour. if we refused, or rather used up, suchpaltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this mightbe done. > chapter 2 - part 2where i lived, and what i lived for i went to the woods because i wished tolive deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if i couldnot learn what it had to teach, and not, when i came to die, discover that i had not lived.i did not wish to live what was not life,

living is so dear; nor did i wish topractise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. i wanted to live deep and suck out all themarrow of life, to live so sturdily and spartan-like as to put to rout all that wasnot life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if itproved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, andpublish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in mynext excursion.

for most men, it appears to me, are in astrange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of god, and have somewhathastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify god and enjoy himforever." still we live meanly, like ants; though thefable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fightwith cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitablewretchedness. our life is frittered away by detail. an honest man has hardly need to count morethan his ten fingers, or in extreme cases

he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest.simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! i say, let your affairs be as two or three,and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep youraccounts on your thumb-nail. in the midst of this chopping sea ofcivilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-oneitems to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, bydead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds.simplify, simplify. instead of three meals a day, if it benecessary eat but one; instead of a hundred

dishes, five; and reduce other things inproportion. our life is like a german confederacy, madeup of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a germancannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. the nation itself, with all its so-calledinternal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is justsuch an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined byluxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as themillion households in the land; and the

only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more thanspartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.it lives too fast. men think that it is essential that thenation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirtymiles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a littleuncertain. if we do not get out sleepers, and forgerails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives toimprove them, who will build railroads?

and if railroads are not built, how shallwe get to heaven in season? but if we stay at home and mind ourbusiness, who will want railroads? we do not ride on the railroad; it ridesupon us. did you ever think what those sleepers arethat underlie the railroad? each one is a man, an irishman, or a yankeeman. the rails are laid on them, and they arecovered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. they are sound sleepers, i assure you.and every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have thepleasure of riding on a rail, others have

the misfortune to be ridden upon. and when they run over a man that iswalking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake himup, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were anexception. i am glad to know that it takes a gang ofmen for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as itis, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again. why should we live with such hurry andwaste of life? we are determined to be starved before weare hungry.

men say that a stitch in time saves nine,and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.as for work, we haven't any of any consequence. we have the saint vitus' dance, and cannotpossibly keep our heads still. if i should only give a few pulls at theparish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly aman on his farm in the outskirts of concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so manytimes this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, i might almost say, but would forsake alland follow that sound, not mainly to save

property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much more to see itburn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire--or to see itput out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it werethe parish church itself. hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap afterdinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "what's the news?" as if therest of mankind had stood his sentinels. some give directions to be waked everyhalf-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell whatthey have dreamed. after a night's sleep the news is asindispensable as the breakfast.

"pray tell me anything new that hashappened to a man anywhere on this globe"-- and he reads it over his coffee and rolls,that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the wachito river; never dreaming the while that he lives in thedark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.for my part, i could easily do without the post-office. i think that there are very few importantcommunications made through it. to speak critically, i never received morethan one or two letters in my life--i wrote this some years ago--that were worth thepostage.

the penny-post is, commonly, an institutionthrough which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is sooften safely offered in jest. and i am sure that i never read anymemorable news in a newspaper. if we read of one man robbed, or murdered,or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboatblown up, or one cow run over on the western railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter--wenever need read of another. one is enough. if you are acquainted with the principle,what do you care for a myriad instances and

applications? to a philosopher all news, as it is called,is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. there was such a rush, as i hear, the otherday at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, thatseveral large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure--news which i seriouslythink a ready wit might write a twelve- month, or twelve years, beforehand withsufficient accuracy. as for spain, for instance, if you know howto throw in don carlos and the infanta, and

don pedro and seville and granada, fromtime to time in the right proportions--they may have changed the names a little since i saw the papers--and serve up a bull-fightwhen other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good anidea of the exact state or ruin of things in spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers:and as for england, almost the last significant scrap of news from that quarterwas the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to thatthing again, unless your speculations are

of a merely pecuniary character. if one may judge who rarely looks into thenewspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a french revolution notexcepted. what news! how much more important to knowwhat that is which was never old! "kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the stateof wei) sent a man to khoung-tseu to know his news. khoung-tseu caused the messenger to beseated near him, and questioned him in these terms: what is your master doing? the messenger answered with respect: mymaster desires to diminish the number of

his faults, but he cannot come to the endof them. the messenger being gone, the philosopherremarked: what a worthy messenger! what a worthy messenger!" the preacher, instead of vexing the ears ofdrowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week--for sunday is the fitconclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one- -with this one other draggle-tail of asermon, should shout with thundering voice, "pause!avast! why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?"

shams and delusions are esteemed forsoundest truths, while reality is fabulous. if men would steadily observe realitiesonly, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with suchthings as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the arabian nights'entertainments. if we respected only what is inevitable andhas a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. when we are unhurried and wise, we perceivethat only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, thatpetty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.

this is always exhilarating and sublime. by closing the eyes and slumbering, andconsenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life ofroutine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. children, who play life, discern its truelaw and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who thinkthat they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. i have read in a hindoo book, that "therewas a king's son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was broughtup by a forester, and, growing up to

maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which helived. one of his father's ministers havingdiscovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his characterwas removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. so soul," continues the hindoo philosopher,"from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, untilthe truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to bebrahme." i perceive that we inhabitants of newengland live this mean life that we do

because our vision does not penetrate thesurface of things. we think that that is which appears to be. if a man should walk through this town andsee only the reality, where, think you, would the "mill-dam" go to? if he should give us an account of therealities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in his description. look at a meeting-house, or a court-house,or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before atrue gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them.

men esteem truth remote, in the outskirtsof the system, behind the farthest star, before adam and after the last man.in eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. but all these times and places andoccasions are now and here. god himself culminates in the presentmoment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. and we are enabled to apprehend at all whatis sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the realitythat surrounds us. the universe constantly and obedientlyanswers to our conceptions; whether we

travel fast or slow, the track is laid forus. let us spend our lives in conceiving then. the poet or the artist never yet had sofair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it. let us spend one day as deliberately asnature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing thatfalls on the rails. let us rise early and fast, or break fast,gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let thebells ring and the children cry--determined to make a day of it.

why should we knock under and go with thestream? let us not be upset and overwhelmed in thatterrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. weather this danger and you are safe, forthe rest of the way is down hill. with unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor,sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like ulysses. if the engine whistles, let it whistle tillit is hoarse for its pains. if the bell rings, why should we run?we will consider what kind of music they are like.

let us settle ourselves, and work and wedgeour feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition,and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through paris and london, through new york and boston andconcord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till wecome to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, this is, and no mistake; and then begin, havinga point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found awall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a nilometer, but a

realometer, that future ages might know howdeep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. if you stand right fronting and face toface to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it werea cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortalcareer. be it life or death, we crave only reality. if we are really dying, let us hear therattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us goabout our business.

time is but the stream i go a-fishing in. i drink at it; but while i drink i see thesandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. its thin current slides away, but eternityremains. i would drink deeper; fish in the sky,whose bottom is pebbly with stars. i cannot count one.i know not the first letter of the alphabet. i have always been regretting that i wasnot as wise as the day i was born. the intellect is a cleaver; it discerns andrifts its way into the secret of things. i do not wish to be any more busy with myhands than is necessary.

my head is hands and feet.i feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. my instinct tells me that my head is anorgan for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it iwould mine and burrow my way through these hills. i think that the richest vein is somewherehereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors i judge; and here i willbegin to mine. chapter 3reading with a little more deliberation in thechoice of their pursuits, all men would

perhaps become essentially students andobservers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. in accumulating property for ourselves orour posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we aremortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change noraccident. the oldest egyptian or hindoo philosopherraised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the tremblingrobe remains raised, and i gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was i in him that was then so bold, and it is he inme that now reviews the vision.

no dust has settled on that robe; no timehas elapsed since that divinity was revealed. that time which we really improve, or whichis improvable, is neither past, present, nor future. my residence was more favorable, not onlyto thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though i was beyond therange of the ordinary circulating library, i had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulateround the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copiedfrom time to time on to linen paper.

says the poet mir camar uddin mast, "beingseated, to run through the region of the spiritual world; i have had this advantagein books. to be intoxicated by a single glass ofwine; i have experienced this pleasure when i have drunk the liquor of the esotericdoctrines." i kept homer's iliad on my table throughthe summer, though i looked at his page only now and then. incessant labor with my hands, at first,for i had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more studyimpossible. yet i sustained myself by the prospect ofsuch reading in future.

i read one or two shallow books of travelin the intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself, and iasked where it was then that i lived. the student may read homer or aeschylus inthe greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he insome measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. the heroic books, even if printed in thecharacter of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times;and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of whatwisdom and valor and generosity we have.

the modern cheap and fertile press, withall its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers ofantiquity. they seem as solitary, and the letter inwhich they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. it is worth the expense of youthful daysand costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which areraised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions andprovocations. it is not in vain that the farmer remembersand repeats the few latin words which he has heard.

men sometimes speak as if the study of theclassics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but theadventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may bewritten and however ancient they may be. for what are the classics but the noblestrecorded thoughts of man? they are the only oracles which are notdecayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as delphi anddodona never gave. we might as well omit to study naturebecause she is old. to read well, that is, to read true booksin a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than anyexercise which the customs of the day

esteem. it requires a training such as the athletesunderwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. it is not enough even to be able to speakthe language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorableinterval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and thelanguage read. the one is commonly transitory, a sound, atongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like thebrutes, of our mothers.

the other is the maturity and experience ofthat; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and selectexpression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again inorder to speak. the crowds of men who merely spoke thegreek and latin tongues in the middle ages were not entitled by the accident of birthto read the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that greek or latin which they knew, butin the select language of literature. they had not learned the nobler dialects ofgreece and rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper tothem, and they prized instead a cheap

contemporary literature. but when the several nations of europe hadacquired distinct though rude written languages of their own, sufficient for thepurposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness thetreasures of antiquity. what the roman and grecian multitude couldnot hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only arestill reading it. however much we may admire the orator'soccasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind orabove the fleeting spoken language as the

firmament with its stars is behind theclouds. there are the stars, and they who can mayread them. the astronomers forever comment on andobserve them. they are not exhalations like our dailycolloquies and vaporous breath. what is called eloquence in the forum iscommonly found to be rhetoric in the study. the orator yields to the inspiration of atransient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; butthe writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire theorator, speaks to the intellect and health

of mankind, to all in any age who canunderstand him. no wonder that alexander carried the iliadwith him on his expeditions in a precious casket.a written word is the choicest of relics. it is something at once more intimate withus and more universal than any other work of art.it is the work of art nearest to life itself. it may be translated into every language,and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;--not be represented oncanvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

the symbol of an ancient man's thoughtbecomes a modern man's speech. two thousand summers have imparted to themonuments of grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnaltint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosionof time. books are the treasured wealth of the worldand the fit inheritance of generations and nations. books, the oldest and the best, standnaturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage.

they have no cause of their own to plead,but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refusethem. their authors are a natural andirresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert aninfluence on mankind. when the illiterate and perhaps scornfultrader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure andindependence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higherbut yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of theimperfection of his culture and the vanity

and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the painswhich he takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he sokeenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family. those who have not learned to read theancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a veryimperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made intoany modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such atranscript.

homer has never yet been printed inenglish, nor aeschylus, nor virgil even-- works as refined, as solidly done, and asbeautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled theelaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of theancients. they only talk of forgetting them who neverknew them. it will be soon enough to forget them whenwe have the learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciatethem. that age will be rich indeed when thoserelics which we call classics, and the

still older and more than classic but evenless known scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the vaticans shall be filled with vedas andzendavestas and bibles, with homers and dantes and shakespeares, and all thecenturies to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum ofthe world. by such a pile we may hope to scale heavenat last. the works of the great poets have never yetbeen read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. they have only been read as the multituderead the stars, at most astrologically, not

astronomically. most men have learned to read to serve apaltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not becheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in ahigh sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties tosleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our mostalert and wakeful hours to. i think that having learned our letters weshould read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a-b-abs,and words of one syllable, in the fourth or

fifth classes, sitting on the lowest andforemost form all our lives. most men are satisfied if they read or hearread, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the bible, andfor the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is calledeasy reading. there is a work in several volumes in ourcirculating library entitled "little reading," which i thought referred to atown of that name which i had not been to. there are those who, like cormorants andostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats andvegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted.

if others are the machines to provide thisprovender, they are the machines to read it. they read the nine thousandth tale aboutzebulon and sophronia, and how they loved as none had ever loved before, and neitherdid the course of their true love run smooth--at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get up again and go on! howsome poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone upas far as the belfry; and then, having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the bell for all the worldto come together and hear, o dear! how he

did get down again! for my part, i think that they had bettermetamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man weather-cocks,as they used to put heroes among the constellations, and let them swing round there till they are rusty, and not comedown at all to bother honest men with their pranks. the next time the novelist rings the bell iwill not stir though the meeting-house burn down. "the skip of the tip-toe-hop, a romance ofthe middle ages, by the celebrated author

of 'tittle-tol-tan,' to appear in monthlyparts; a great rush; don't all come together." all this they read with saucer eyes, anderect and primitive curiosity, and with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations evenyet need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt- covered edition of cinderella--without anyimprovement, that i can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, orany more skill in extracting or inserting the moral. the result is dulness of sight, astagnation of the vital circulations, and a

general deliquium and sloughing off of allthe intellectual faculties. this sort of gingerbread is baked daily andmore sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and- indian in almost every oven, and finds asurer market. the best books are not read even by thosewho are called good readers. what does our concord culture amount to? there is in this town, with a very fewexceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in english literature,whose words all can read and spell. even the college-bred and so-calledliberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance withthe english classics; and as for the

recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and bibles, which are accessibleto all who will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to becomeacquainted with them. i know a woodchopper, of middle age, whotakes a french paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to "keephimself in practice," he being a canadian by birth; and when i ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in thisworld, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his english. this is about as much as the college-bredgenerally do or aspire to do, and they take

an english paper for the purpose. one who has just come from reading perhapsone of the best english books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? or suppose he comes from reading a greek orlatin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so-calledilliterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. indeed, there is hardly the professor inour colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, hasproportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a greek poet, and has

any sympathy to impart to the alert andheroic reader; and as for the sacred scriptures, or bibles of mankind, who inthis town can tell me even their titles? most men do not know that any nation butthe hebrews have had a scripture. a man, any man, will go considerably out ofhis way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest menof antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;--and yet we learn to readonly as far as easy reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school,the "little reading," and story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and our

reading, our conversation and thinking, areall on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins. i aspire to be acquainted with wiser menthan this our concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here.or shall i hear the name of plato and never read his book? as if plato were my townsman and i neversaw him--my next neighbor and i never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of hiswords. but how actually is it? his dialogues, which contain what wasimmortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and

yet i never read them. we are underbred and low-lived andilliterate; and in this respect i confess i do not make any very broad distinctionbetween the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned toread only what is for children and feeble intellects. we should be as good as the worthies ofantiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. we are a race of tit-men, and soar butlittle higher in our intellectual flights

than the columns of the daily paper.it is not all books that are as dull as their readers. there are probably words addressed to ourcondition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be moresalutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect onthe face of things for us. how many a man has dated a new era in hislife from the reading of a book! the book exists for us, perchance, whichwill explain our miracles and reveal new ones.the at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

these same questions that disturb andpuzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one hasbeen omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words andhis life. moreover, with wisdom we shall learnliberality. the solitary hired man on a farm in theoutskirts of concord, who has had his second birth and peculiar religiousexperience, and is driven as he believes into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may think it is not true; butzoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled the same road and had the sameexperience; but he, being wise, knew it to

be universal, and treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said to haveinvented and established worship among men. let him humbly commune with zoroaster then,and through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with jesus christhimself, and let "our church" go by the board. we boast that we belong to the nineteenthcentury and are making the most rapid strides of any nation.but consider how little this village does for its own culture. i do not wish to flatter my townsmen, norto be flattered by them, for that will not

advance either of us.we need to be provoked--goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. we have a comparatively decent system ofcommon schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved lyceum inthe winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, noschool for ourselves. we spend more on almost any article ofbodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. it is time that we had uncommon schools,that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women.

it is time that villages were universities,and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure--if they are,indeed, so well off--to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. shall the world be confined to one paris orone oxford forever? cannot students be boarded here and get aliberal education under the skies of concord? can we not hire some abelard to lecture tous? alas! what with foddering the cattle andtending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadlyneglected.

in this country, the village should in somerespects take the place of the nobleman of europe.it should be the patron of the fine arts. it is rich enough. it wants only the magnanimity andrefinement. it can spend money enough on such things asfarmers and traders value, but it is thought utopian to propose spending moneyfor things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. this town has spent seventeen thousanddollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend somuch on living wit, the true meat to put

into that shell, in a hundred years. the one hundred and twenty-five dollarsannually subscribed for a lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equalsum raised in the town. if we live in the nineteenth century, whyshould we not enjoy the advantages which the nineteenth century offers?why should our life be in any respect provincial? if we will read newspapers, why not skipthe gossip of boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once?--not besucking the pap of "neutral family" papers, or browsing "olive branches" here in newengland.

let the reports of all the learnedsocieties come to us, and we will see if they know anything. why should we leave it to harper & brothersand redding & co. to select our reading? as the nobleman of cultivated tastesurrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture--genius--learning--wit--books--paintings--statuary--music--philosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village do--not stop short at a pedagogue,a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our pilgrimforefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these.

to act collectively is according to thespirit of our institutions; and i am confident that, as our circumstances aremore flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman's. new england can hire all the wise men inthe world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincialat all. that is the uncommon school we want. instead of noblemen, let us have noblevillages of men. if it is necessary, omit one bridge overthe river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darkergulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

chapter 4sounds but while we are confined to books, thoughthe most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which arethemselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak withoutmetaphor, which alone is copious and standard.much is published, but little printed. the rays which stream through the shutterwill be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed.no method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert.

what is a course of history or philosophy,or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirableroutine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is tobe seen? will you be a reader, a student merely, ora seer? read your fate, see what is before you, andwalk on into futurity. i did not read books the first summer; ihoed beans. nay, i often did better than this. there were times when i could not afford tosacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands.i love a broad margin to my life.

sometimes, in a summer morning, havingtaken my accustomed bath, i sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in arevery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around orflitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, orthe noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, i was reminded of thelapse of time. i grew in those seasons like corn in thenight, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. they were not time subtracted from my life,but so much over and above my usual

allowance.i realized what the orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. for the most part, i minded not how thehours went. the day advanced as if to light some workof mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable isaccomplished. instead of singing like the birds, isilently smiled at my incessant good fortune. as the sparrow had its trill, sitting onthe hickory before my door, so had i my chuckle or suppressed warble which he mighthear out of my nest.

my days were not days of the week, bearingthe stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by theticking of a clock; for i lived like the puri indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they haveonly one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward foryesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." this was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, ishould not have been found wanting. a man must find his occasions in himself,it is true.

the natural day is very calm, and willhardly reprove his indolence. i had this advantage, at least, in my modeof life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society andthe theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. it was a drama of many scenes and withoutan end. if we were always, indeed, getting ourliving, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned,we should never be troubled with ennui. follow your genius closely enough, and itwill not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.housework was a pleasant pastime.

when my floor was dirty, i rose early, and,setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but onebudget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean andwhite; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had driedmy house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almostuninterupted. it was pleasant to see my whole householdeffects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my three-legged table, from which i did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amidthe pines and hickories.

they seemed glad to get out themselves, andas if unwilling to be brought in. i was sometimes tempted to stretch anawning over them and take my seat there. it was worth the while to see the sun shineon these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting mostfamiliar objects look out of doors than in the house. a bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pinecones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. it looked as if this was the way theseforms came to be transferred to our

furniture, to tables, chairs, andbedsteads--because they once stood in their midst. my house was on the side of a hill,immediately on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitchpines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpathled down the hill. in my front yard grew the strawberry,blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub oaks and sand cherry,blueberry and groundnut. near the end of may, the sand cherry(cerasus pumila) adorned the sides of the path with its delicate flowers arranged inumbels cylindrically about its short stems,

which last, in the fall, weighed down with good-sized and handsome cherries, fell overin wreaths like rays on every side. i tasted them out of compliment to nature,though they were scarcely palatable. the sumach (rhus glabra) grew luxuriantlyabout the house, pushing up through the embankment which i had made, and growingfive or six feet the first season. its broad pinnate tropical leaf waspleasant though strange to look on. the large buds, suddenly pushing out latein the spring from dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves asby magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; and sometimes,

as i sat at my window, so heedlessly didthey grow and tax their weak joints, i heard a fresh and tender bough suddenlyfall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, brokenoff by its own weight. in august, the large masses of berries,which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their brightvelvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke the tender limbs. as i sit at my window this summerafternoon, hawks are circling about my clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons,flying by two and threes athwart my view, or perching restless on the white pine

boughs behind my house, gives a voice tothe air; a fish hawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish;a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour i have heard the rattleof railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from boston to thecountry. for i did not live so out of the world asthat boy who, as i hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part of the town, butere long ran away and came home again,

quite down at the heel and homesick. he had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place; the folks were all gone off; why, you couldn't even hear the whistle!i doubt if there is such a place in massachusetts now:-- "in truth, our village has become a buttfor one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o'er our peaceful plain its soothing soundis--concord." the fitchburg railroad touches the pondabout a hundred rods south of where i dwell. i usually go to the village along itscauseway, and am, as it were, related to

society by this link. the men on the freight trains, who go overthe whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me sooften, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so i am. i too would fain be a track-repairersomewhere in the orbit of the earth. the whistle of the locomotive penetrates mywoods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer'syard, informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous country tradersfrom the other side.

as they come under one horizon, they shouttheir warning to get off the track to the other, heard sometimes through the circlesof two towns. here come your groceries, country; yourrations, countrymen! nor is there any man so independent on hisfarm that he can say them nay. and here's your pay for them! screams thecountryman's whistle; timber like long battering-rams going twenty miles an houragainst the city's walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy-laden thatdwell within them. with such huge and lumbering civility thecountry hands a chair to the city. all the indian huckleberry hills arestripped, all the cranberry meadows are

raked into the city. up comes the cotton, down goes the wovencloth; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up come the books, but down goesthe wit that writes them. when i meet the engine with its train ofcars moving off with planetary motion--or, rather, like a comet, for the beholderknows not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look likea returning curve--with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in goldenand silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which i have seen, high in the heavens,

unfolding its masses to the light--as ifthis traveling demigod, this cloud- compeller, would ere long take the sunsetsky for the livery of his train; when i hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking theearth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils (what kind ofwinged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new mythology i don't know), it seems as if the earth had got a race nowworthy to inhabit it. if all were as it seems, and men made theelements their servants for noble ends! if the cloud that hangs over the enginewere the perspiration of heroic deeds, or

as beneficent as that which floats over thefarmer's fields, then the elements and nature herself would cheerfully accompanymen on their errands and be their escort. i watch the passage of the morning carswith the same feeling that i do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. their train of clouds stretching far behindand rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to boston,conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of carswhich hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear.

the stabler of the iron horse was up earlythis winter morning by the light of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder andharness his steed. fire, too, was awakened thus early to putthe vital heat in him and get him off. if the enterprise were as innocent as it isearly! if the snow lies deep, they strap on hissnowshoes, and, with the giant plow, plow a furrow from the mountains to the seaboard,in which the cars, like a following drill- barrow, sprinkle all the restless men and floating merchandise in the country forseed. all day the fire-steed flies over thecountry, stopping only that his master may

rest, and i am awakened by his tramp anddefiant snort at midnight, when in some remote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and snow; and hewill reach his stall only with the morning star, to start once more on his travelswithout rest or slumber. or perchance, at evening, i hear him in hisstable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves andcool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. if the enterprise were as heroic andcommanding as it is protracted and unwearied!

far through unfrequented woods on theconfines of towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkestnight dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliant station-house intown or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the dismal swamp,scaring the owl and fox. the startings and arrivals of the cars arenow the epochs in the village day. they go and come with such regularity andprecision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocksby them, and thus one well-conducted institution regulates a whole country.

have not men improved somewhat inpunctuality since the railroad was invented?do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? there is something electrifying in theatmosphere of the former place. i have been astonished at the miracles ithas wrought; that some of my neighbors, who, i should have prophesied, once forall, would never get to boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand when the bellrings. to do things "railroad fashion" is now thebyword; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by anypower to get off its track.

there is no stopping to read the riot act,no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case.we have constructed a fate, an atropos, that never turns aside. (let that be the name of your engine.) men are advertised that at a certain hourand minute these bolts will be shot toward particular points of the compass; yet itinterferes with no man's business, and the children go to school on the other track. we live the steadier for it.we are all educated thus to be sons of tell.the air is full of invisible bolts.

every path but your own is the path offate. keep on your own track, then.what recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. it does not clasp its hands and pray tojupiter. i see these men every day go about theirbusiness with more or less courage and content, doing more even than they suspect,and perchance better employed than they could have consciously devised. i am less affected by their heroism whostood up for half an hour in the front line at buena vista, than by the steady andcheerful valor of the men who inhabit the

snowplow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does notgo to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews oftheir iron steed are frozen. on this morning of the great snow,perchance, which is still raging and chilling men's blood, i bear the muffledtone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, withoutlong delay, notwithstanding the veto of a new england northeast snow-storm, and ibehold the plowmen covered with snow and

rime, their heads peering, above the mould- board which is turning down other thandaisies and the nests of field mice, like bowlders of the sierra nevada, that occupyan outside place in the universe. commerce is unexpectedly confident andserene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. it is very natural in its methods withal,far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments, and hence itssingular success. i am refreshed and expanded when thefreight train rattles past me, and i smell the stores which go dispensing their odorsall the way from long wharf to lake champlain, reminding me of foreign parts,

of coral reefs, and indian oceans, andtropical climes, and the extent of the globe. i feel more like a citizen of the world atthe sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen new england heads the nextsummer, the manilla hemp and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrapiron, and rusty nails. this carload of torn sails is more legibleand interesting now than if they should be wrought into paper and printed books. who can write so graphically the history ofthe storms they have weathered as these rents have done?they are proof-sheets which need no

correction. here goes lumber from the maine woods,which did not go out to sea in the last freshet, risen four dollars on the thousandbecause of what did go out or was split up; pine, spruce, cedar--first, second, third, and fourth qualities, so lately all of onequality, to wave over the bear, and moose, and caribou. next rolls thomaston lime, a prime lot,which will get far among the hills before it gets slacked. these rags in bales, of all hues andqualities, the lowest condition to which

cotton and linen descend, the final resultof dress--of patterns which are now no longer cried up, unless it be in milwaukee, as those splendid articles, english,french, or american prints, ginghams, muslins, etc., gathered from all quartersboth of fashion and poverty, going to become paper of one color or a few shades only, on which, forsooth, will be writtentales of real life, high and low, and founded on fact! this closed car smells of salt fish, thestrong new england and commercial scent, reminding me of the grand banks and thefisheries.

who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughlycured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting the perseverance ofthe saints to the blush? with which you may sweep or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himselfand his lading against sun, wind, and rain behind it--and the trader, as a concordtrader once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at last his oldest customer cannot tell surelywhether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as asnowflake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent dun-fishfor a saturday's dinner.

next spanish hides, with the tails stillpreserving their twist and the angle of elevation they had when the oxen that worethem were careering over the pampas of the spanish main--a type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost hopeless and incurableare all constitutional vices. i confess, that practically speaking, wheni have learned a man's real disposition, i have no hopes of changing it for the betteror worse in this state of existence. as the orientals say, "a cur's tail may bewarmed, and pressed, and bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve years' laborbestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural form."

the only effectual cure for suchinveteracies as these tails exhibit is to make glue of them, which i believe is whatis usually done with them, and then they will stay put and stick. here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandydirected to john smith, cuttingsville, vermont, some trader among the greenmountains, who imports for the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance stands over his bulkhead and thinks of the lastarrivals on the coast, how they may affect the price for him, telling his customersthis moment, as he has told them twenty times before this morning, that he expectssome by the next train of prime quality.

it is advertised in the cuttingsvilletimes. while these things go up other things comedown. warned by the whizzing sound, i look upfrom my book and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which has winged itsway over the green mountains and the connecticut, shot like an arrow through the township within ten minutes, and scarceanother eye beholds it; going "to be the mast of some great ammiral." and hark! here comes the cattle-trainbearing the cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in theair, drovers with their sticks, and

shepherd boys in the midst of their flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirledalong like leaves blown from the mountains by the september gales. the air is filled with the bleating ofcalves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by. when the old bell-wether at the headrattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and the little hills likelambs. a carload of drovers, too, in the midst, ona level with their droves now, their vocation gone, but still clinging to theiruseless sticks as their badge of office.

but their dogs, where are they? it is a stampede to them; they are quitethrown out; they have lost the scent. methinks i hear them barking behind thepeterboro' hills, or panting up the western slope of the green mountains. they will not be in at the death.their vocation, too, is gone. their fidelity and sagacity are below parnow. they will slink back to their kennels indisgrace, or perchance run wild and strike a league with the wolf and the fox.so is your pastoral life whirled past and away.

but the bell rings, and i must get off thetrack and let the cars go by;-- what's the railroad to me?i never go to see where it ends. it fills a few hollows,and makes banks for the swallows, it sets the sand a-blowing,and the blackberries a-growing, but i cross it like a cart-path in thewoods. i will not have my eyes put out and my earsspoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing. now that the cars are gone by and all therestless world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, iam more alone than ever.

for the rest of the long afternoon,perhaps, my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a carriage orteam along the distant highway. sometimes, on sundays, i heard the bells,the lincoln, acton, bedford, or concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint,sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. at a sufficient distance over the woodsthis sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizonwere the strings of a harp which it swept. all sound heard at the greatest possibledistance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just asthe intervening atmosphere makes a distant

ridge of earth interesting to our eyes bythe azure tint it imparts to it. there came to me in this case a melodywhich the air had strained, and which had conversed with every leaf and needle of thewood, that portion of the sound which the elements had taken up and modulated andechoed from vale to vale. the echo is, to some extent, an originalsound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. it is not merely a repetition of what wasworth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial wordsand notes sung by a wood-nymph. at evening, the distant lowing of some cowin the horizon beyond the woods sounded

sweet and melodious, and at first i wouldmistake it for the voices of certain minstrels by whom i was sometimes serenaded, who might be straying over hilland dale; but soon i was not unpleasantly disappointed when it was prolonged into thecheap and natural music of the cow. i do not mean to be satirical, but toexpress my appreciation of those youths' singing, when i state that i perceivedclearly that it was akin to the music of the cow, and they were at length onearticulation of nature. regularly at half-past seven, in one partof the summer, after the evening train had gone by, the whip-poor-wills chanted theirvespers for half an hour, sitting on a

stump by my door, or upon the ridge-pole ofthe house. they would begin to sing almost with asmuch precision as a clock, within five minutes of a particular time, referred tothe setting of the sun, every evening. i had a rare opportunity to becomeacquainted with their habits. sometimes i heard four or five at once indifferent parts of the wood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so near methat i distinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often that singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web,only proportionally louder. sometimes one would circle round and roundme in the woods a few feet distant as if

tethered by a string, when probably i wasnear its eggs. they sang at intervals throughout thenight, and were again as musical as ever just before and about dawn. when other birds are still, the screechowls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu.their dismal scream is truly ben jonsonian. wise midnight hags! it is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who ofthe poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutualconsolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal lovein the infernal groves.

yet i love to hear their wailing, theirdoleful responses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me sometimes of musicand singing birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets andsighs that would fain be sung. they are the spirits, the low spirits andmelancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked theearth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of theirtransgressions. they give me a new sense of the variety andcapacity of that nature which is our common dwelling.

oh-o-o-o-o that i never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair tosome new perch on the gray oaks. then--that i never had been bor-r-r-r-n!echoes another on the farther side with tremulous sincerity, and--bor-r-r-r-n!comes faintly from far in the lincoln woods. i was also serenaded by a hooting owl. near at hand you could fancy it the mostmelancholy sound in nature, as if she meant by this to stereotype and make permanent inher choir the dying moans of a human being- -some poor weak relic of mortality who has

left hope behind, and howls like an animal,yet with human sobs, on entering the dark valley, made more awful by a certaingurgling melodiousness--i find myself beginning with the letters gl when i try to imitate it--expressive of a mind which hasreached the gelatinous, mildewy stage in the mortification of all healthy andcourageous thought. it reminded me of ghouls and idiots andinsane howlings. but now one answers from far woods in astrain made really melodious by distance-- hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo; and indeed for themost part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether heard by day ornight, summer or winter.

i rejoice that there are owls.let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. it is a sound admirably suited to swampsand twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast andundeveloped nature which men have not recognized. they represent the stark twilight andunsatisfied thoughts which all have. all day the sun has shone on the surface ofsome savage swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and smallhawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the

partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but nowa more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes toexpress the meaning of nature there. late in the evening i heard the distantrumbling of wagons over bridges--a sound heard farther than almost any other atnight--the baying of dogs, and sometimes again the lowing of some disconsolate cowin a distant barn-yard. in the mean-while all the shore rang withthe trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers,still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their stygian lake--if the walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for thoughthere are almost no weeds, there are frogs

there--who would fain keep up the hilariousrules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine haslost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweetintoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation andwaterloggedness and distention. the most aldermanic, with his chin upon aheart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to his drooling chaps, under this northernshore quaffs a deep draught of the once scorned water, and passes round the cup with the ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r--oonk, tr-r-r-oonk! and straightway comes

over the water from some distant cove thesame password repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to his mark; and when this observance has made thecircuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction,tr-r-r-oonk! and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, thatthere be no mistake; and then the howl goes round again and again, until the sundisperses the morning mist, and only the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing troonk from time to time, andpausing for a reply.

i am not sure that i ever heard the soundof cock-crowing from my clearing, and i thought that it might be worth the while tokeep a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. the note of this once wild indian pheasantis certainly the most remarkable of any bird's, and if they could be naturalizedwithout being domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and thehooting of the owl; and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauseswhen their lords' clarions rested! no wonder that man added this bird to histame stock--to say nothing of the eggs and

drumsticks. to walk in a winter morning in a wood wherethese birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on thetrees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feeblernotes of other birds--think of it! it would put nations on the alert. who would not be early to rise, and riseearlier and earlier every successive day of his life, till he became unspeakablyhealthy, wealthy, and wise? this foreign bird's note is celebrated bythe poets of all countries along with the notes of their native songsters.all climates agree with brave chanticleer.

he is more indigenous even than thenatives. his health is ever good, his lungs aresound, his spirits never flag. even the sailor on the atlantic and pacificis awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound never roused me from my slumbers. i kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, norhens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds; neitherthe churn, nor the spinning-wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children crying, to comfortone. an old-fashioned man would have lost hissenses or died of ennui before this.

not even rats in the wall, for they werestarved out, or rather were never baited in--only squirrels on the roof and underthe floor, a whip-poor-will on the ridge- pole, a blue jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck under thehouse, a screech owl or a cat owl behind it, a flock of wild geese or a laughingloon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the not even a lark or an oriole, those mildplantation birds, ever visited my clearing. no cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle inthe yard. no yard! but unfenced nature reaching up toyour very sills. a young forest growing up under yourmeadows, and wild sumachs and blackberry

vines breaking through into your cellar;sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room,their roots reaching quite under the house. instead of a scuttle or a blind blown offin the gale--a pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind your house forfuel. instead of no path to the front-yard gatein the great snow--no gate--no front-yard-- and no path to the civilized world.