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

the

      first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear

      will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all,

      the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most

      important messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round

      eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried

      a peck of corn to mill.

      One says to me, “I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to

      travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the

      country.” But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest

      traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who

      will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety

      cents. That is almost a day’s wages. I remember when wages were sixty

      cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot,

      and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week

      together. You will in the mean while have earned your fare, and arrive

      there some time to-morrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky

      enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will

      be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad

      reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and

      as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should

      have to cut your acquaintance altogether.

      Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with

      regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long. To

      make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent

      to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct

      notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades

      long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and

      for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor

      shouts “All aboard!” when the smoke is blown away and the vapor

      condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are

      run over,—and it will be called, and will be, “A melancholy accident.”

      No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that

      is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their

      elasticity and desire to travel by that time. This spending of the best

      part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable

      liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the

      Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he

      might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have

      gone up garret at once. “What!” exclaim a million Irishmen starting up

      from all the shanties in the land, “is not this railroad which we have

      built a good thing?” Yes, I answer, _comparatively_ good, that is, you

      might have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that

      you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.

      Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by

      some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses,

      I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it

      chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas,

      and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly growing up to

      pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for eight

      dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that it was “good for

      nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on.” I put no manure whatever

      on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and not

      expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it all

      once. I got out several cords of stumps in ploughing, which supplied me

      with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mould,

      easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of

      the beans there. The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood

      behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the

      remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the

      ploughing, though I held the plough myself. My farm outgoes for the

      first season were, for implements, seed, work, &c., $14.72½. The seed

      corn was given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you

      plant more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen

      bushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn

      and turnips were too late to come to any thing. My whole income from

      the farm was $ 23.44 Deducting the outgoes,........... 14.72½ There are left,................. $ 8.71½,

      beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was made

      of the value of $4.50,—the amount on hand much more than balancing a

      little grass which I did not raise. All things considered, that is,

      considering the importance of a man’s soul and of to-day,

      notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly

      even because of its transient character, I believe that that was doing

      better than any farmer in Concord did that year.

      The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which I

      required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience

      of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on

      husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if one would live simply

      and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate,

      and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and

      expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground,

      and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to

      plough it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to manure

      the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work as it were with

      his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and thus he would not be tied

      to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to speak

      impartially