Walden Study Text
Chapter VIII: The Village
AFTER HOEING, OR perhaps reading and writing, in the forenoon, I usually bathed
again in the pond, swimming across one of its coves for a stint, and washed the
dust of labor from my person, or smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had
made, and for the afternoon was absolutely free. I strolled to
the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating
either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in
, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves
and the peeping of frogs. As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels,
so I walked in the village to see the instead of the wind among
the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a
colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods
in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had
been each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to
a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently The village
appeared to me a great news room; and on one side, to support it, as once at on State Street, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal
and other groceries. Some have such a vast appetite for the former commodity,
that is, the news, and such sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever
in public avenues without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper through them
like the or as if it only producing —otherwise it would often be painful to bear—without affecting the consciousness. I hardly ever failed, when I rambled through the
village, to see a row of such worthies, either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves,
with their bodies inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line this
way and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous expression, or else leaning
against a barn with their hands in their pockets, like as if to
prop it up. They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind.
These are the coarsest in which all gossip is first rudely digested or
cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more within doors.
I observed that the were the grocery, the bar-room, the
post-office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part of the they kept
a bell, a big gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient places; and the houses were
so arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and fronting one another,
so that every traveller had to and every man, woman, and child
might get a lick at him. Of course, those who were stationed nearest to the head
of the line, where they could most see and be seen, and have the first blow at
him, paid the highest prices for their places; and the few straggling inhabitants
in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line began to occur, and the traveller
could get over walls or turn aside into cow-paths, and so escape, paid a very
slight ground or Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some
to catch him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar; some by the
fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller's; and others by the hair or the
feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor. Besides, there
was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at every one of these houses,
and company expected about these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully
from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without deliberation
to the goal, as is recommended to those who run the gauntlet, or by keeping my
thoughts on high things, like Orpheus  , who, "loudly singing the praises
of the gods to his lyre, drowned the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of
danger." Sometimes I bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts,
for I did not stand much about gracefulness, and I was even accustomed to make an into some houses, where I was
well entertained , and after learning the kernels and very last sieveful of news—what
had subsided, the prospects of war and peace, and whether the world was likely
to hold together much longer—I was let out , and
so escaped to the woods again.
It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch myself into
the night, especially if it was dark and tempestuous, and set sail from some
bright village parlor or lecture room, with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon
my shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods, having made all tight without
and withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer
man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. I had
many a genial thought by the cabin fire I was never
cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I encountered some severe storms.
It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I frequently
had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn
my route, and, where there was no cart-path, the faint
track which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which
I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than
eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest
night. Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when
my feet felt the path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded
all the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch,
I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought
that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake it,
as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance. when
a visitor chanced to stay into evening, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged
to conduct him to the cart-path in the rear of the house, and then point out
to him the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided
rather by his feet than his eyes. One very dark night I directed thus on their
way two young men who had been fishing in the pond. They lived about a mile
off through the woods, and were quite used to the route. A day or two after
one of them told me that they wandered about the greater part of the night,
close by their own premises, and did not get home till toward morning, by which
time, as there had been several heavy showers in the meanwhile, and the leaves
were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have heard of many going
astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick that you
could cut it with a knife, as the saying is. Some who live in the outskirts,
having come to town a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put up
for the night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile
out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, and not knowing
when they turned. It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience,
to be lost in the woods any time. Often in a snow-storm, even by day, one will
come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way
leads to the village. Though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times,
he cannot recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were
a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater.
In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering
like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond
our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring
cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round—for a man needs
only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost—do
we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn
the points of compass again as often as be awakes, whether from sleep or any
abstraction. in other words not till we have lost the
world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite
extent of our relations.
One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village
to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as
I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority
of, the State which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle, at
the door of its senate-house. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes.
But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions,
and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate
It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have
run "amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run
"amok" against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released
the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to
get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I was never molested by any
person but those who represented the State. I had no lock nor bolt but for the
desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows.
I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days;
not even when the next fall I spent in the woods of Maine. And
yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of
soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary
amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my
closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper.
Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered
no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed anything but
one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly gilded, and
this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this time. I am convinced, that
if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would
be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than
is sufficient while others have not enough. The Homers would soon
get properly distributed.
"Nec bella fuerunt,
Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes."
"Nor wars did men molest,
When only beechen bowls were in request."
"You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments?
Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man
are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass,
when the wind passes over it, bends."
To Chapter IX
|
