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

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

in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and

will cost me no more than my present one.

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one

for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now

pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is

that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings

and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement.

Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy,—chaff which I find it

difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any

man,—I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is

such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved

that I will not through humility become the devil’s attorney. I will

endeavor to speak a good word for the truth. At Cambridge College the

mere rent of a student’s room, which is only a little larger than my

own, is thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the

advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and

the occupant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and

perhaps a residence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we

had more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would

be needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired,

but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great

measure vanish. Those conveniences which the student requires at

Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great a

sacrifice of life as they would with proper management on both sides.

Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things

which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important

item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which

he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries

no charge is made. The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get

up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then following blindly the

principles of a division of labor to its extreme, a principle which

should never be followed but with circumspection,—to call in a

contractor who makes this a subject of speculation, and he employs

Irishmen or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the

students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves for it; and