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

is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally

      serve? No doubt another _may_ also think for me; but it is not

      therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my

      thinking for myself.

      True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard

      of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural

      ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if

      it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of

      view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism. A

      sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the cornice, not at

      the foundation. It was only how to put a core of truth within the

      ornaments, that every sugar plum in fact might have an almond or

      caraway seed in it,—though I hold that almonds are most wholesome

      without the sugar,—and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might

      build truly within and without, and let the ornaments take care of

      themselves. What reasonable man ever supposed that ornaments were

      something outward and in the skin merely,—that the tortoise got his

      spotted shell, or the shellfish its mother-o’-pearl tints, by such a

      contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man

      has no more to do with the style of architecture of his house than a

      tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to

      try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy

      will find it out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man

      seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half

      truth to the rude occupants who really knew it better than he. What of

      architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within

      outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is

      the only builder,—out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness,

      without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional

      beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a

      like unconscious beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings in this

      country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log

      huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the

      inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their

      surfaces merely, which makes them _picturesque;_ and equally

      interesting will be the citizen’s suburban box, when his life shall be

      as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little

      straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great proportion

      of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale

      would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the

      substantials. They can do without _architecture_ who have no olives nor

      wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments

      of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much

      time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are

      made the _belles-lettres_ and the _beaux-arts_ and their professors.

      Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him

      or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box. It would signify

      somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, _he_ slanted them and daubed it;

      but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with

      constructing his own coffin,—the architecture of the grave, and

      “carpenter” is but another name for “coffin-maker.” One man says, in

      his despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at

      your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of his last

      and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of

      leisure he must have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better

      paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for

      you. An enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! When

      you have got my ornaments ready I will wear them.

      Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house,

      which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy

      shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose edges I was obliged

      to straighten with a plane.

      I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by

      fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large

      window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick

      fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price

      for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which

      was done by myself, was as follows; and I give the details because very

      few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still,

      if any, the separate cost of the various materials which compose them:—

      Boards.......................... $ 8.03½, mostly shanty boards.

      Refuse shingles for roof sides,.. 4.00

      Laths,........................... 1.25

      Two second-hand windows

      with glass,................... 2.43

      One thousand old brick,.......... 4.00

      Two casks of lime,............... 2.40 That was high.

      Hair,............................ 0.31 More than I needed.

      Mantle-tree iron,................ 0.15

      Nails,........................... 3.90

      Hinges and screws,............... 0.14

      Latch,........................... 0.10

      Chalk,........................... 0.01

      Transportation,.................. 1.40 I carried a good part

      ———— on my back.

      In all,..................... $28.12½

      These are all the materials excepting the timber stones and sand, which

      I claimed by squatter’s right. I have also a small wood-shed adjoining,

      made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the house.

      I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street