Thus I found I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get clothing and fuel. My furniture, part of which I made myself, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass, three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying pan, a dipper, a wash bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all, I have pitied him, not because it was his all, but because he had all that to carry.
Earning a Living
For more than five years I maintained myself solely by the labour of my hands, and I found that by working for about six weeks in the year I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were out of proportion to my income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe accordingly; and I lost my time into the bargain. I have tried trade; but I have learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from Heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business. I found that the occupation of day-labourer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in the year to support me. The labourer's day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labour; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.
But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises. However, when I thought to indulge myself in this respect by maintaining certain poor persons as comfortably as I maintain myself, and even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor.
The Life with Nature
When I took up my abode in the woods I found myself suddenly neighbour to the birds, not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager.
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say, innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. Morning brings back the heroic ages. Then, for an hour at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? As for work, we haven't any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. Hardly a man takes a half hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks: "What's the news?" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. "Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe." And he reads over his coffee and rolls that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River, never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark, unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
Let us spend our day as deliberately as Nature. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation. Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner situated in the meridian shadows.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom, and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current glides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper, fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.
Reading
My residence was more favourable, not only to thought but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the morning circulating library I had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world. I kept Homer's "Iliad" on my table through the summer, though I looked at his pages only now and then. To read well—that is to read true books in a true spirit—is a noble exercise and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. No wonder that Alexander carried the "Iliad" with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics.
In the Sun
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes on a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's waggon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realised what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. Instead of singing like the birds I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. This was sheer idleness to my fellow townsmen, no doubt, but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard I should not have been found wanting.
Night Sounds
Regularly at half past seven, in one part of the summer, the whip-poor-wills chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the ridge pole of the house. When other birds were still the screech owls took up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Wise midnight hags! I love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the woodside. They give me a new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o that I had never been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles, with the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then: That I had never been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the further side with tremulous sincerity, and bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from far in the Lincoln woods. I require that there are owls. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have.
I am not sure that ever I heard the sound of cock crowing from my clearing, and I thought that it might be worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird's, and if they could be naturalised without being domesticated it would soon become the most famous sound in our woods.
I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds, neither the churn nor the spinning wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort me; only squirrels on the roof, a whip-poor-will on the ridge pole, a bluejay screaming beneath the window, a woodchuck under the house, a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the night.