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

      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

      nor useful. 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,