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

dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master’s premises

with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an

interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if

they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell

surely of any company of civilized men, which belonged to the most

respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round

the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia,

she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling

dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she “was now in a

civilized country, where —— — people are judged of by their clothes.”

Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of

wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for

the possessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect,

numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary

sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which

you may call endless; a woman’s dress, at least, is never done.

A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a

new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in

the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero

longer than they have served his valet,—if a hero ever has a

valet,—bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only

they who go to soirées and legislative halls must have new coats, coats

to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and

trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do;

will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes,—his old coat, actually

worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a

deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be

bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do

with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,

and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how

can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before

you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to _do

with_, but something to _do_, or rather something to _be_. Perhaps we

should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until

we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we

feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like

keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the

fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary

ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the

caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for

clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall

be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at

last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.

We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by

addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are

our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may

be stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker

garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but

our shirts are our liber or true bark, which cannot be removed without

girdling and so destroying the man. I believe that all races at some

seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a

man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark,

and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if

an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the

gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most

purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be

obtained at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be

bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, thick

pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a

pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for

sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal

cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of _his own

earning_, there will not be found wise men to do him reverence?

When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me

gravely, “They do not make them so now,” not emphasizing the “They” at

all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I

find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot

believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this

oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing

to myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it,

that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity _They_ are related

to _me_, and what authority they may have in an affair which affects me

so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal

mystery, and without any more emphasis of the “they,”—“It is true, they

did not make them so recently, but they do now.” Of what use this

measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the

breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on? We

worship not the Graces, nor the Parcæ, but Fashion. She spins and

weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a

traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I

sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in

this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a

powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that

they would not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would be

some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg

deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these

things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not

forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.

On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in

this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. At present men make

shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on

what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of

space or time, laugh at each other’s masquerade. Every generation

laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are

amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, as

much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands.

All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious

eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it, which restrain

laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be

taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that

mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannon ball rags are as becoming

as purple.

The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps

how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may

discover the particular figure which this generation requires today.

The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of

two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a

particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the