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

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СКАЧАТЬ Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the

      walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful

      housekeeping and 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 town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that

      “they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some

      hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky

      fire against the earth, at the highest side.” They did not “provide

      them houses,” says he, “till the earth, by the Lord’s blessing, brought

      forth bread to feed them,” and the first year’s crop was so light that

      “they were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season.” The

      secretary of the Province of New Netherland, writing in Dutch, in 1650,

      for the information of those who wished to take up land there, states

      more particularly that “those in New Netherland, and especially in New

      England, who have no means to build farmhouses at first according to

      their wishes, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or

      seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the

      earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the

      bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth;

      floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling,

      raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green

      sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their

      entire families for two, three, and four years, it being understood

      that partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the

      size of the family. The wealthy and principal men in New England, in

      the beginning of the colonies, commenced their first dwelling houses in

      this fashion for two reasons; firstly, in order not to waste time in

      building, and not to want food the next season; secondly, in order not

      to discourage poor laboring people whom they brought over in numbers

      from Fatherland. In the course of three or four years, when the country

      became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves handsome houses,

      spending on them several thousands.”

      In this course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at

      least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants

      first. But are the more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of

      acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, 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 ornament

      is to be neglected 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 know what they are lined with.

      Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a

      cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to accept

      the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention and

      industry of mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this, boards and

      shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained than

      suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities, or

      even well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speak understandingly on this

      subject, for I have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically

      and practically. With a little more wit we might use these materials so

      as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our civilization

      a blessing. The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

      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 my house,

      and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their

      youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but

      perhaps it is the most generous 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

      with water. There were some slight flurries of snow during the days

      that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the

      railroad, on my way home, СКАЧАТЬ