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

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СКАЧАТЬ sand heap stretched away gleaming

      in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I

      heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence

      another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the

      winter of man’s discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the

      life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe

      had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with

      a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to

      swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on

      the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed

      there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not

      yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a

      like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition;

      but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing

      them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.

      I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with

      portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun

      to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in

      the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose

      groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit

      of the fog.

      So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs

      and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or

      scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself,—

      Men say they know many things;

      But lo! they have taken wings,—

      The arts and sciences,

      And a thousand appliances;

      The wind that blows

      Is all that any body knows.

      I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two

      sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the

      rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much

      stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned

      by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. My days in

      the woods were not very long ones; yet I usually carried my dinner of

      bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at

      noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my

      bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were covered

      with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend

      than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them,

      having become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the

      wood was attracted by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly

      over the chips which I had made.

      By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made

      the most of it, my house was framed and ready for the raising. I had

      already bought the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked on

      the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James Collins’ shanty was

      considered an uncommonly fine one. When I called to see it he was not

      at home. I walked about the outside, at first unobserved from within,

      the window was so deep and high. It was of small dimensions, with a

      peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being

      raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. The roof was

      the soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by the

      sun. Door-sill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens

      under the door board. Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it

      from the inside. The hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark,

      and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only

      here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. She

      lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and

      also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to

      step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own

      words, they were “good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a

      good window,”—of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed

      out that way lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an

      infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed

      looking-glass, and a patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling,

      all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for James had in the

      meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents

      to-night, he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to nobody

      else meanwhile: I to take possession at six. It were well, he said, to

      be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust

      claims on the score of ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the

      only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family on the road. One

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