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

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 soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by the

sun. Door-sill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens

under the door board. Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it

from the inside. The hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark,

and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only

here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. She

lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and

also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to

step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own

words, they were “good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a

good window,”—of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed

out that way lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an

infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed

looking-glass, and a patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling,

all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for James had in the

meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents

to-night, he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to nobody

else meanwhile: I to take possession at six. It were well, he said, to

be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust

claims on the score of ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the

only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family on the road. One

large bundle held their all,—bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens,—all

but the cat, she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I

learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a

dead cat at last.

I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and

removed it to the pond side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on

the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun. One early

thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the woodland path. I was

informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an

Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still

tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his

pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day, and

look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation;

there being a dearth of work, as he said. He was there to represent

spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with

the removal of the gods of Troy.

I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a

woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and

blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square

by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any

winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun

having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. It was but

two hours’ work. I took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground,

for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable

temperature. Under the most splendid house in the city is still to be

found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after

the superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the

earth. The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a

burrow.

At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my

acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness

than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man was

ever more honored in the character of his raisers than I. They are

destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one

day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was

boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and

lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before

boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two

cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built the

chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for

warmth, doing my cooking in the mean while out of doors on the ground,

early in the morning: which mode I still think is in some respects more

convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed before my

bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them

to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those

days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the

least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or

tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the

same purpose as the Iliad.

It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I

did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a

cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never

raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than

our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a

man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own

nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own

hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and

honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as

birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like

cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds

have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical

notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the

carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the

mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so

simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to

the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a

man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer.

Where 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