The Illustrated Walden

by Henry David Thoreau

  No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. “Tell the tailors,” said he, “to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch.” His companion’s prayer is forgotten.

  However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: “From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought.” Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, “and lo! creation widens to our view.” We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Crœsus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

  I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of California and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the Hon. Mr. —— of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings,—not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,—not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;—not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less,—not suppose a case, but take the case that is; to travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me. It affords me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation. Let us not play at kittlybenders. There is a solid bottom everywhere. We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good. I would not be one of those who will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furrowing. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,—a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.

  Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze them. They talked to me of the age of the wine and the fame of the vintage; but I thought of an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they had not got, and could not buy. The style, the house and grounds and “entertainment” pass for nothing with me. I called on the king, but he made me wait in his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him.

  How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were to begin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes, and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction. There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies, and the public Eulogies of Great Men! It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue. “Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs, which shall never die,”—that is, as long as we can remember them. The learned societies and great men of Assyria,—where are they? What youthful philosophers and experimentalists we are! There is not one of my readers who has yet lived a whole human life. These may be but the spring months in the life of the race. If we have had the seven-years’ itch, we have not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.

  There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and
yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change our clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come out of the ground? The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

  The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts,—from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb,—heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board,—may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society’s most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!

  I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning-star.

  Index

  The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.

  Acton (Mass.), 127.

  Æs alienum, another’s brass, a very ancient slough, 5.

  Æsculapius, that old herb-doctor, 144.

  Age and youth, 7.

  Alms House Farm, 271.

  America, the only true, 217.

  “Amok” against T., society running, 181.

  Amusements, games and, despair concealed under, 6.

  Animal food, objections to, 227.

  Animal labor, man better without the help of, 57.

  Animal life and heat nearly synonymous, 12.

  Ants, battle of the, 243–247.

  Apples, the world eating green, 81.

  Architecture, need of relation between man, truth, and, 46–47.

  Asiatic Russia, Mme. Pfeiffer in, 21.

  Atlas, 86.

  Atropos, as name for engine, 123.

  Auction of a deacon’s effects, 70; or increasing, 70.

  Average, the law of, in nature and ethics, 306.

  BAKER FARM, 213–222.

  Baker’s, barn, 274; Farm, 293.

  Bands of music in distance, 167.

  Bartram, William, quoted, 70–71.

  Baskets, strolling Indian selling, 17.

  BEAN-FIELD, THE, 161–173.

  Bedford (Mass.), 127.

  Behavior, repentance for good, 8–9.

  Bells of Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, Concord, the, 127–128.

  “Best” room, the pine wood behind house, 148.

  Bibles of mankind, 108, 110.

  Birds, living with the, 88–89.

  Body a temple, man’s, 234.

  Bogs with hard bottom, 347.

  Books, how to read, 105; the inheritance of nations, 107.

  Box, living in a, 28.

  Brahmins, their forms of conscious penance, 2; Walden ice makes T. one with the, 313–314.

  Bread without yeast, 64–65.

  Breed’s hut, 274.

  Bricks, mortar growing harder on, 256.

  Brighton—or Brighttown, 140.

  Brister’s Hill, 243; 271; 272; 277; 281.

  Brister’s Spring, 277, 279.

  BRUTE NEIGHBORS, 237–251.

  Bug from an egg in table of apple wood, the, 349–350.

  Building one’s own house, significance of, 48.

  Business habits indispensable, strict, 18.

  Busk, Indian feast of first fruits, 70–71.

  Calidas’, Sacontala quoted, 335.

  Cambridge, college room rent compared with T.’s, 50; crowded hives of, 141.

  Canadian wood-chopper, 150–156.

  Canoe, water-logged in Walden Pond, 202.

  Cards left by visitors, 186.

  Carew, Thomas, quoted, 83.

  Caryatides, gossips leaning against barn like, 176.

  Cat, the Collins’s, 43; in the woods, domestic and “winged,” 247–248.

  Cato Major, quoted, 65; 87; 172; 258.

  Caves, birds do not sing in, 27.

  Celebrating, men, a committee of arrangements, always, 347.

  Celestial Empire, conditions of successful trade with, 18.

  Cellar, a burrow to which house is but a porch, 45.

  Cellini, Benvenuto, quoted, 214–215.

  Chairs for society, three, 146.

  Change of air, 336.

  Channing, W. E., quoted, 215.

  Chapman, George, quoted, 32.

  Chastity, the flowering of man, 232.

  Chaucer, Geoffrey, quoted, 225.

  Chickadees, coming of the, 290.

  Chief end of man, 6.

  Christianity, adopted as an improved method of agri-culture, 36.

  Circulating library, 104.

  Civilization not all a success, 33.

  Classics, a study of the, 105–108; must be read in the original, 110.

  Clothing, a necessary of life, 11–12; not always procured for true utility, 20; new and old, 21–23.

  Cock-crowing, the charms of, 131–133.

  Codman place, the, 274.

  Cold Friday, dating from, 268.

  Collins, James, Irishman whose shanty T. bought, 42.

  Commerce, in praise of, 123–124.

  Commonsense, the sense of men asleep, 342.

  Compost, better part of man soon ploughed into soil for, 3.

  CONCLUSION, 336–350.

  Concord (Mass.), Walden Pond in, 1; traveled a good deal in, 2; the farmers of, 31; house surpassing the luxury of, 49; little fresh meal and corn sold in, 65; Battle-Ground, 89; effect of a fire bell on people living near, 96–97; culture, 110; wiser men than produced by soil of, 111; hired man of, 112; liberal education in, 112; “its soothing sound is ——,” 120; sign of a trader in, 125; bells of, 127; two-colored waters of, 187; Walden bequeathed to, 204; fight of ants, 245; D. Ingraham, Esq., of, 271; “to the rescue,” 27; 278; 294.

  Concord River, 205; 208.

  Confucius, quoted, 9; 140–141.

  Coöperation, difficulties of, 74.

  Cost, the amount of life exchanged for a thing, 30; of house, items of, 48–49; of food for eight months, 61; total, of living, 61; bean-field, 169–170.

  Cowper, William, quoted, 86.
<
br />   Cummings, slave of Squire, 272.

  Damodara, quoted, 91.

  Darwin, Charles R., quoted, 11.

  Davenant, Sir Wm., Gondibert quoted, 274.

  Day, deliberately, like nature, spending one, 101.

  Debt, getting in and out of, 5.

  Desperation, mass of men lead lives of quiet, 6.

  Dialogue between Hermit and Poet, 237–239.

  Digby, Sir Kenelm, quoted, 169.

  Discontented, speaking mainly to the, 15.

  Divinity in man! Look at the teamster, 5–6.

  Dog in the woods, a village Bose, 247.

  Doing-good, a crowded profession, 75.

  Drummond of Hawthornden, William, quoted, 208.

  Ducks on Walden Pond, 251.

  Dug-out houses of American colonists, 37–38.

  Dwelling-house, what not to make it, 27.

  ECONOMY, 1–83.

  Education, tuition bills pay for the least valuable part of, 50.

  Egotism in writers, 2.

  Eloquence a transient thing, 106.

  Elysian life, summer makes possible, 12.

  England, last news from, 99.

  Epidermis, our outside clothes, 23.

  Epitome of the year, the day, 317.

  Etesian winds, news simmers through men like, 176.

  Evelyn, John, quoted, 8; 169.

  Expenses, see Cost; farm, 55; outgo and income, bean-field, 169–170.

  Exploration of one’s self, 337.

  Extra Vagance! depends on how you are yarded, 340.

  Face, imaginary formation by thawing of the, 323.