WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Henry David Thoreau

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      to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely

      teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man’s

      providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas,

      and empty guest chambers for empty guests, 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, whom we have apotheosized as

      messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in

      my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of fashionable

      furniture. Or what if I were to allow—would 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

      housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not

      leave her morning’s work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora

      and the music of Memnon, what should be man’s _morning work_ 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 I threw them out the window in

      disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit

      in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has

      broken ground.

      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 presume him to be a

      Sardanapalus, and if he resigned 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 become no better than a

      modern drawing room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sun-shades, and

      a hundred other oriental things, which we are taking west with 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 simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages

      imply this advantage at least, that they left him still but a sojourner

      in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated

      his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and

      was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing

      the mountain tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

      The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is

      become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a

      housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled

      down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely

      as an improved method of _agri_-culture. We have built for this world a

      family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art

      are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this

      condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state

      comfortable and that higher 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

      economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give

      way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the

      mantel-piece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and

      honest though earthy foundation. I cannot but perceive that this so

      called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not get on

      in the enjoyment of the _fine_ arts which adorn it, my attention being

      wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember that the greatest genuine

      leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is that of certain

      wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level

      ground. Without factitious support, man is sure to come to earth again

      beyond that distance. The first question which I am tempted to put to

      the proprietor of such great impropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you

      one of the ninety-seven who fail, or of 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

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