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

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, its yellow 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