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

in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing says that “the

      Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his

      head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow—in a

      degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in

      any woollen clothing.” He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, “They

      are not hardier than other people.” But, probably, man did not live

      long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in

      a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally

      signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family;

      though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates

      where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy

      season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is

      unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost

      solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the

      symbol of a day’s march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark

      of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man was not

      made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his

      world, and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and

      out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm

      weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing

      of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he

      had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam

      and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes.

      Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical

      warmth, then the warmth of the affections.

      We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some

      enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every

      child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay out

      doors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having

      an instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with which when

      young he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a cave? It was

      the natural yearning of that portion of our most primitive ancestor

      which still survived in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of

      palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass

      and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we

      know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic

      in more senses than we think. From the hearth to the field is a great

      distance. It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days

      and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies,

      if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell

      there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their

      innocence in dovecots.

      However, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it behooves him

      to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself

      in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a

      prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a

      shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this

      town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a

      foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it

      deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living

      honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question

      which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am

      become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six

      feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at

      night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might

      get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it,

      to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and

      hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be

      free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable

      alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you

      got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for

      rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and

      more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as

      this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being

      treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable

      house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was

      once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished

      ready to their hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians

      subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, “The best

      of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of

      trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up,

      and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they

      are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of

      a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not

      so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet

      long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams,

      and found them as warm as the best English houses.” He adds, that they

      were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered

      mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had

      advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat

      suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge

      was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and

      taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or

      its apartment in one.

      In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best,

      and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I

      speak within